Black Buzz News Service
Black Chronicle Archives
Washington D.C.
February 10, 2010
December, 1927-One of America's wealthiest Negro inventors was Elbert R. (Doc) Robinson.
He perfected a wheel design that was eventually used by every railroad in the country.
Although he patented this device, a white man stole the idea and sold it to the Chicago Railway Co.
Robinson took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court finally awarded him 13 million dollars in royalties.
Blogger Black Buzz states that hundreds of Negroes had their inventions stolen by conniving and manipulative and roguish whites. In the vast majority of cases involving the theft of Negro inventions the courts on all levels were always sympathetic to the whites who had taken advantage of the Negroes lack of connection and power. So the Robinson case stands out as a landmark decision by the high court in its ruling for a Negro litigant.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Kansas Blacks Fight Off Attackers
Black Buzz News Service
Black Chronicle Archives
February 10, 2010
Coffeyville, Kansas
COFFEYVILLE, Kan., December 10, 1927- In March, 1927, Texas Negroes won a court victory over the "White Primary."
The same month, Negroes in Coffeyville, Kansas won a different kind of victory. They successfully defended their section of the city from invasion by a white mob.
The whites had threatened to burn down the Negro section when their attempt to lynch a Negro had failed. The Negro Curtis Smith, was suspected of having attacked two white girls. He was being held at the City Hall jail by police, who refused to surrender him. Tear gas was used to drive the whites away, but not before they broke every window in City Hall.
Having been denied their lynch victim and angered by the use of gas, the mob turned on the Negro section for revenge.
The colored population was awaiting the attack. Armed with rifles, pistols and bayonets, they marched in military formation to meet the enemy. Opening fire from previously dug trenches, the Negroes wounded two and drove off a mob of 1,500 armed whites.
Troop B, Kansas National Guard Unit, soon arrived to restore order. The mob returned, however after breaking into hardware stores for more guns and ammunition.
Fighting continued throughout the day. Major E.T. Patterson of the Kansas Guard declared the City of Coffeyville under military rule and imposed a nine p.m. curfew.
Curtis Smith, the mob's intended lynch victim, was freed after the girls were unable to identify him.
During the military occupation, several Negro leaders protested against the military's search procedures. Some Negroes, they said had been stopped and searched for weapons as many as ten times.
After the first two days of fighting, peace was restored. The Negro section was still intact;
the colored population of Coffeyville, Kansas had served notice that their rights cannot be ignored.
Blogger Black Buzz says the above type of incidents are still occurring throughout the good old USA. Innocent Negro citizens are still being brutalized by racists cops, white mobs and individuals; people of color are still being discriminated against in all the systems of Employment, Housing, Home Loans, New Home Financing, and Home Refinancing, Health Care Coverage, Education, Residential Segregation, Credit Bureau Ratings, Immigration Status/Citizenship, and Places Open to the Public.
I strongly urge all citizens to obtain a copy of the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report for 2009, to become better informed citizens on the need to combat all forms of hatred at www.intelligencereport.org
or call 334-956-8486
Black Chronicle Archives
February 10, 2010
Coffeyville, Kansas
COFFEYVILLE, Kan., December 10, 1927- In March, 1927, Texas Negroes won a court victory over the "White Primary."
The same month, Negroes in Coffeyville, Kansas won a different kind of victory. They successfully defended their section of the city from invasion by a white mob.
The whites had threatened to burn down the Negro section when their attempt to lynch a Negro had failed. The Negro Curtis Smith, was suspected of having attacked two white girls. He was being held at the City Hall jail by police, who refused to surrender him. Tear gas was used to drive the whites away, but not before they broke every window in City Hall.
Having been denied their lynch victim and angered by the use of gas, the mob turned on the Negro section for revenge.
The colored population was awaiting the attack. Armed with rifles, pistols and bayonets, they marched in military formation to meet the enemy. Opening fire from previously dug trenches, the Negroes wounded two and drove off a mob of 1,500 armed whites.
Troop B, Kansas National Guard Unit, soon arrived to restore order. The mob returned, however after breaking into hardware stores for more guns and ammunition.
Fighting continued throughout the day. Major E.T. Patterson of the Kansas Guard declared the City of Coffeyville under military rule and imposed a nine p.m. curfew.
Curtis Smith, the mob's intended lynch victim, was freed after the girls were unable to identify him.
During the military occupation, several Negro leaders protested against the military's search procedures. Some Negroes, they said had been stopped and searched for weapons as many as ten times.
After the first two days of fighting, peace was restored. The Negro section was still intact;
the colored population of Coffeyville, Kansas had served notice that their rights cannot be ignored.
Blogger Black Buzz says the above type of incidents are still occurring throughout the good old USA. Innocent Negro citizens are still being brutalized by racists cops, white mobs and individuals; people of color are still being discriminated against in all the systems of Employment, Housing, Home Loans, New Home Financing, and Home Refinancing, Health Care Coverage, Education, Residential Segregation, Credit Bureau Ratings, Immigration Status/Citizenship, and Places Open to the Public.
I strongly urge all citizens to obtain a copy of the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report for 2009, to become better informed citizens on the need to combat all forms of hatred at www.intelligencereport.org
or call 334-956-8486
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Negro Library Neglected
Black Buzz New Service
February 7 ,2010
Black Chronicle
New York,N.Y.
Feb.2,1948-- Two elderly Negro women recently rushed into the New York Public Library's 135th street branch, and volunteered to do anything they could to save the collection. They were relieved to discover that the Arthur C. Schomburg Collection, special library of Negro literature, history and art, was not actually being destroyed; it was suffering from neglect.
Former curator Dr. L.D. Reddick has for some time been charging publicly that inadequate funds threatened the library's existence. The women apparently misinterpreted his remarks.The neglect has been laid to city officials and Public Library authorities.
In 1926, the collection was donated to the city by the Carnegie Foundation, which had purchased it from Mr. Schomburg.
*Blogger Black Buzz's family visited "The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in the Harlem section of New York City in 2009 and they reported that the Schomburg Center still suffers from benign neglect and lack of adequate funding from the City of New York, private foundations and the Black community.
February 7 ,2010
Black Chronicle
New York,N.Y.
Feb.2,1948-- Two elderly Negro women recently rushed into the New York Public Library's 135th street branch, and volunteered to do anything they could to save the collection. They were relieved to discover that the Arthur C. Schomburg Collection, special library of Negro literature, history and art, was not actually being destroyed; it was suffering from neglect.
Former curator Dr. L.D. Reddick has for some time been charging publicly that inadequate funds threatened the library's existence. The women apparently misinterpreted his remarks.The neglect has been laid to city officials and Public Library authorities.
In 1926, the collection was donated to the city by the Carnegie Foundation, which had purchased it from Mr. Schomburg.
*Blogger Black Buzz's family visited "The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in the Harlem section of New York City in 2009 and they reported that the Schomburg Center still suffers from benign neglect and lack of adequate funding from the City of New York, private foundations and the Black community.
German Jews Denied Vote
Black Buzz News Service
February 7,2010
Archives
Berlin , Germany, March 10,1936
Jews in Germany have been warned through the press that they risk arrest and prosecution if they vote in the upcoming elections. Another recent law prohibits them from attending public schools.
February 7,2010
Archives
Berlin , Germany, March 10,1936
Jews in Germany have been warned through the press that they risk arrest and prosecution if they vote in the upcoming elections. Another recent law prohibits them from attending public schools.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
A slave society will not endure: By Barbara Jean Pollard Taylor
Black Buzz News Service
February 6, 2010
Archives of USA TODAY
Pittsburgh Pa.
The below article titled "A slave society will not endure " appeared in the USA Today on June 4 ,1986. The article was written by Barbara Jean Pollard Taylor a retired educator currently living in Chicago,Illinois.
A slave society will not endure
Jefferson City , Mo-
History tells us no group of people will long remain submissive to the domination of another.The story of the Roman Empire is replete with slave revolts. Nat Turner and John Brown are well known to students of U.S. history. History does repeat itself , and we who do not learn from it are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
A continuing source of cheap labor has allowed the building of great national treasures and the apparently smooth functioning of the governing class. It was the key to the great pyramids of Egypt , the Nazi war machine ,the great plantations like Monticello and Mount Vernon.
Pharaohs ,charismatic dictators even our Founding Fathers convinced themselves that another race or nation was less human themselves.
They were wedded to the belief that these races or nations should be dominated and were not to think for themselves , plan their own destinies.
It was an easy next step to the belief that these less-than-human beings could be trained to provide for the needs and wants of the governing class.
These societies did not endure.
The average white South African cannot easily give up a status and level of living that he has enjoyed for centuries. He has come to believe his status is his right. This is a castle built of cards ,which must collapse , at the first strong breeze.The South African way of life is very fragile system that arbitrarily categorizes , restricts ,inhibits ,and denies the personhood of its citizens.
History has shown that a society built on the repression of groups of its citizenry is doomed to fall. Living ,breathing thinking man will not be content to remain enslaved. Inter tribal clashes among blacks and coloreds in South Africa will not continue. Man will not continue to self-destruct. Man will be free , and in his struggle to be free will attract others of like mind to his cause.
We in the global family of man do band together in crises to help each other. Indeed ,we are the world- in South Carolina , South America , South Africa. We will not stand idly by and allow our brothers to starve , to be shot at , to be oppressed by an unjust system.
Barbara Pollard Taylor is a
director of the National Black
Political Caucus.
February 6, 2010
Archives of USA TODAY
Pittsburgh Pa.
The below article titled "A slave society will not endure " appeared in the USA Today on June 4 ,1986. The article was written by Barbara Jean Pollard Taylor a retired educator currently living in Chicago,Illinois.
A slave society will not endure
Jefferson City , Mo-
History tells us no group of people will long remain submissive to the domination of another.The story of the Roman Empire is replete with slave revolts. Nat Turner and John Brown are well known to students of U.S. history. History does repeat itself , and we who do not learn from it are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
A continuing source of cheap labor has allowed the building of great national treasures and the apparently smooth functioning of the governing class. It was the key to the great pyramids of Egypt , the Nazi war machine ,the great plantations like Monticello and Mount Vernon.
Pharaohs ,charismatic dictators even our Founding Fathers convinced themselves that another race or nation was less human themselves.
They were wedded to the belief that these races or nations should be dominated and were not to think for themselves , plan their own destinies.
It was an easy next step to the belief that these less-than-human beings could be trained to provide for the needs and wants of the governing class.
These societies did not endure.
The average white South African cannot easily give up a status and level of living that he has enjoyed for centuries. He has come to believe his status is his right. This is a castle built of cards ,which must collapse , at the first strong breeze.The South African way of life is very fragile system that arbitrarily categorizes , restricts ,inhibits ,and denies the personhood of its citizens.
History has shown that a society built on the repression of groups of its citizenry is doomed to fall. Living ,breathing thinking man will not be content to remain enslaved. Inter tribal clashes among blacks and coloreds in South Africa will not continue. Man will not continue to self-destruct. Man will be free , and in his struggle to be free will attract others of like mind to his cause.
We in the global family of man do band together in crises to help each other. Indeed ,we are the world- in South Carolina , South America , South Africa. We will not stand idly by and allow our brothers to starve , to be shot at , to be oppressed by an unjust system.
Barbara Pollard Taylor is a
director of the National Black
Political Caucus.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Pittsburgh Courier Story
Black Buzz News Service
Special Edition
February 2, 2010
Pittsburgh, PA
The following story about the Pittsburgh Courier is taken from the official Centennial Edition dated August 17, 1963.
Published by:
The Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Company,Inc.
ABC
The Pittsburgh Courier
(National-Georgia-Ohio-City)
The Chicago Courier
The Detroit Courier
The New York Courier
The Florida Courier
The Philadelphia Courier
The Courier Story
1910-1963
Over a Half Century of Dedication
and Determination.
The success story of this nation's largest Negro weekly is encompassed in the vision and faith of its founders-in its dedication to public service -in its never-ending fight for complete equality for All Americans.
An autonomous enterprise. The Courier is completely unionized from the reporters, who initiate our stories to the truckers, who carry these stories to the newsstands.
Branch offices and correspondents in major cities across the country submit an unending flow of editorial and advertising copy to the home office in Pittsburgh. This material is edited and prepared for inclusion in one of some nine different editions giving our more than-500,000 readers the news-all the news-and the stories behind that news.
Personnel are employed on the basis of ability and judged on their individual merits. This policy,developed through years of experience ,is exemplified by the company's interracial hiring program.
Crusading journalism , a trademark at The Courier, is evidenced by the timely and significant campaigns and stories developed and/or uncovered over years.
The Self-Respect Campaign...Double V Campaign,( Victory at Home, Victory Abroad).......Campaign to End Segregation in Washington,D.C....Educational Equality Campaign....Dollars for Dignity.There was also the Joe Louis crusade , the fight for integration in the armed services, the battle for integration in major league baseball, professional football, golf and tennis;there was the Ghana Story and the Emmett Till case.
This is The Courier Story. Both management and labor are resolved to carry out the fundamental credo of the institution's founders : "You can buy the people's time, perhaps their skill, but never their enthusiasm and good-will.
That you have to earn.
Mrs. Beatrice Saunders Robinson
*Blogger Black Buzz's Mother, Mrs. Beatrice Saunders Robinson, in 1948 was the first African American female in the country to be appointed as treasurer to a National Union, the American Newspaper Guild Pittsburgh local. She went on to serve for 15 years on the local Newspaper Guild's Executive Board.
Mrs. Saunders Robinson was also chairman of the Courier Unit of the American Newspaper Guild. Black Buzz says he remembers Jimmy Hoffa pulling up to the Courier in two big Black Cadillac Limousines to have a meet and discuss with Mrs. Vann. Hoffa represented Teamsters Local 21 and all the Courier pressmen were members of Local 21. My mother informed me that Hoffa was very disrespectful towards Mrs. Vann and very intimidating and outright nasty. My mother further stated that Mr. Hoffa was very polite and respectable towards her and the Newspaper Guild of America whom she represented.
Black Buzz traveled with his mother throughout the United States and Canada as she represented the Courier Unit at the Annual American Newspaper Guild Conventions in such places as San Jose, Boston, New York, St. Louis, Albany and Toronto.
I remember in 1956 staying at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Canada and having lunch with the Mayor of Toronto on an island where many of the people were playing croquette and golf. The thing that I found strange about Toronto is that my mother and I were always waited on before the Caucasians in our party in all the phases of public accommodations.
We rode to Canada in a car owned by David Welty and were also accompanied by Dave Minneham, Ethel Cobb and Jeanie O'Toole.
David Welty would later become Pittsburgh Mayor Caliguiri's Press Secretary. Ethel Cobb retired from the Post Gazette after 37 years of service.
My mother and I traveled to California with the Secretary of the Pittsburgh local of the American Newspaper Guild, Helen M. Minear, her son Gary O'Malley, Ethel Cobb of the Post Gazette Unit, and Jeanie O'Otoole who represented the Guild for the Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph employees.
We traveled in Mrs. Minear's brand new 1958 Plymouth Belvedere Station Wagon. It was a nine passenger wagon and was quite large as were most of the cars back in 1958.
I also remember visiting Knots Berry Farm and Disneyland in Anaheim, California. And I remember going up on the Ski-Lift in the Rockies and traveling on that horrible U.S. Route 40 where there were no guard rails in the Rockies. We visited Fisherman's Wharf, China Town in San Francisco and the Hearst Castle off route 1 in California. We also visited the Painted Desert in Arizona and the Petrified Forest in Arizona. We got caught in a terrible rainstorm on the famous route 66 in New Mexico.
My mother and I were Jim Crowed in Reno, Nevada where one motel owner in Reno told my mother that she was "glad that God didn't make her Black". My mother responded to this bigoted women by saying: "I think it is a blessing to be Black and you have a very good day ". Also none of the motels in Tulsa, Oklahoma would allow us to stay in them except there was one that was located off the Turner Turnpike. But the motel owners insisted that we had to leave by six a.m. in the morning. The employee at this motel said that we were light enough to stay and perhaps her Southern guests wouldn't think we were Black. Note my mother was very light and had green/gray/blue eyes more commonly called "cat eyes" among Blacks. My Mother's father, Thomas Marion of Charlotte, North Carolina was a Quadroon and her mother's mother, Mama Dicie was a full bloodied Cherokee Indian from Pee Dee River, South Carolina. My Mother's grandfather, Papa Wolfe's father was from Liberia and his tribe is unknown to the family. We are presently not in a position to do any DNA testing on Papa Wolfe for an exact match with any of the 28 main tribes that make up present day Liberia. These assertions about Papa Wolfe's tribe in Liberia are inconclusive and but the jury is still out on this subject.. as we uncover new facts and records about our vast extensive family history that covers four major continents.
Blogger Black Buzz was 15 years of age at the time of this trip to California. All the Caucasians with whom we were traveling witnessed these Jim Crow incidents firsthand.
Black Buzz says he didn't see any other Blacks at said Guild Conventions.
Most of the daily and weekly corporate white owned newspapers in the USA employed very few Blacks as reporters, editorial writers, clerks, cashiers, etc. in 1958.
The New York Post employed a Black reporter by the name of Ted Poston at the time but he was not an official or officer in the Newspaper Guild as was my mother. Mr. Poston also wrote a weekly column titled "Harlem Shadows" for the Pittsburgh Courier.
I have learned through my research, that in 1935, Mr. Poston led a strike for union recognition at the Amsterdam News. The campaign was successful. Thus the Black employees got their first signed contract between Black employees and their Employers. However Mr. Poston later said proudly that it cost him his job with the paper because they found a way to fire him.
Eventually Mrs. Beatrice Saunders Robinson became the Courier's office manger. She worked for the Courier from 1941 until her retirement in 1980. What a true pioneer.
*In 1973, blogger Black Buzz worked for the Governor's Office of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, Pittsburgh Regional Office. I had a case against the ABC Motel in Ligonier, PA for a refusal to accommodate a Black couple from Colorado. The Black couple had made their reservation with said ABC Motel but after they arrived, the motel owners informed the couple that there were no accommodations available.
To make a long important story short, I found reasonable cause (discrimination to credit the allegations of the complaint of the Black couple) and a very appropriate remedy was obtained for the Black couple in question.
I also had a refusal to accommodate case for a group of Blacks from New York against the largest Motel in Grove City, PA. After the group had made reservations for said motel they were told upon arrival that no rooms were available. This case occurred in 1974 and reasonable cause was found in this complaint to credit the allegations of said charge. We entered into a consent order and decree with damages etc.
I had other cases of a similar nature at the Commission which are too numerous to go into at this moment. But the driving force throughout my adulthood in fighting discrimination has been as a result of those horrible nefarious experiences I had with those Jim Crow incidents back in 1958 and because of the other pervasive discrimination and racism that still exist in many forms.
Just last year in the "Windy City"(Chicago), a night club/bar refused to service a group of Black students from Washington University (St. Louis) while serving 200 of their fellow White classmates. The club in question was not private and therefore was open to the public. The owners claimed that the Black students were not dressed appropriately. There are many such incidents as the one in Chicago all around the good Old USA and enforcement on the local, federal and state levels is virtually non-existent. It is a known fact that many of these Local, State, Federal Civil Rights and Human Relations Agencies and Commissions suffer from bureaucratic inertia.
There is more to the rest of the story !
Special Edition
February 2, 2010
Pittsburgh, PA
The following story about the Pittsburgh Courier is taken from the official Centennial Edition dated August 17, 1963.
Published by:
The Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Company,Inc.
ABC
The Pittsburgh Courier
(National-Georgia-Ohio-City)
The Chicago Courier
The Detroit Courier
The New York Courier
The Florida Courier
The Philadelphia Courier
The Courier Story
1910-1963
Over a Half Century of Dedication
and Determination.
The success story of this nation's largest Negro weekly is encompassed in the vision and faith of its founders-in its dedication to public service -in its never-ending fight for complete equality for All Americans.
An autonomous enterprise. The Courier is completely unionized from the reporters, who initiate our stories to the truckers, who carry these stories to the newsstands.
Branch offices and correspondents in major cities across the country submit an unending flow of editorial and advertising copy to the home office in Pittsburgh. This material is edited and prepared for inclusion in one of some nine different editions giving our more than-500,000 readers the news-all the news-and the stories behind that news.
Personnel are employed on the basis of ability and judged on their individual merits. This policy,developed through years of experience ,is exemplified by the company's interracial hiring program.
Crusading journalism , a trademark at The Courier, is evidenced by the timely and significant campaigns and stories developed and/or uncovered over years.
The Self-Respect Campaign...Double V Campaign,( Victory at Home, Victory Abroad).......Campaign to End Segregation in Washington,D.C....Educational Equality Campaign....Dollars for Dignity.There was also the Joe Louis crusade , the fight for integration in the armed services, the battle for integration in major league baseball, professional football, golf and tennis;there was the Ghana Story and the Emmett Till case.
This is The Courier Story. Both management and labor are resolved to carry out the fundamental credo of the institution's founders : "You can buy the people's time, perhaps their skill, but never their enthusiasm and good-will.
That you have to earn.
Mrs. Beatrice Saunders Robinson
*Blogger Black Buzz's Mother, Mrs. Beatrice Saunders Robinson, in 1948 was the first African American female in the country to be appointed as treasurer to a National Union, the American Newspaper Guild Pittsburgh local. She went on to serve for 15 years on the local Newspaper Guild's Executive Board.
Mrs. Saunders Robinson was also chairman of the Courier Unit of the American Newspaper Guild. Black Buzz says he remembers Jimmy Hoffa pulling up to the Courier in two big Black Cadillac Limousines to have a meet and discuss with Mrs. Vann. Hoffa represented Teamsters Local 21 and all the Courier pressmen were members of Local 21. My mother informed me that Hoffa was very disrespectful towards Mrs. Vann and very intimidating and outright nasty. My mother further stated that Mr. Hoffa was very polite and respectable towards her and the Newspaper Guild of America whom she represented.
Black Buzz traveled with his mother throughout the United States and Canada as she represented the Courier Unit at the Annual American Newspaper Guild Conventions in such places as San Jose, Boston, New York, St. Louis, Albany and Toronto.
I remember in 1956 staying at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Canada and having lunch with the Mayor of Toronto on an island where many of the people were playing croquette and golf. The thing that I found strange about Toronto is that my mother and I were always waited on before the Caucasians in our party in all the phases of public accommodations.
We rode to Canada in a car owned by David Welty and were also accompanied by Dave Minneham, Ethel Cobb and Jeanie O'Toole.
David Welty would later become Pittsburgh Mayor Caliguiri's Press Secretary. Ethel Cobb retired from the Post Gazette after 37 years of service.
My mother and I traveled to California with the Secretary of the Pittsburgh local of the American Newspaper Guild, Helen M. Minear, her son Gary O'Malley, Ethel Cobb of the Post Gazette Unit, and Jeanie O'Otoole who represented the Guild for the Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph employees.
We traveled in Mrs. Minear's brand new 1958 Plymouth Belvedere Station Wagon. It was a nine passenger wagon and was quite large as were most of the cars back in 1958.
I also remember visiting Knots Berry Farm and Disneyland in Anaheim, California. And I remember going up on the Ski-Lift in the Rockies and traveling on that horrible U.S. Route 40 where there were no guard rails in the Rockies. We visited Fisherman's Wharf, China Town in San Francisco and the Hearst Castle off route 1 in California. We also visited the Painted Desert in Arizona and the Petrified Forest in Arizona. We got caught in a terrible rainstorm on the famous route 66 in New Mexico.
My mother and I were Jim Crowed in Reno, Nevada where one motel owner in Reno told my mother that she was "glad that God didn't make her Black". My mother responded to this bigoted women by saying: "I think it is a blessing to be Black and you have a very good day ". Also none of the motels in Tulsa, Oklahoma would allow us to stay in them except there was one that was located off the Turner Turnpike. But the motel owners insisted that we had to leave by six a.m. in the morning. The employee at this motel said that we were light enough to stay and perhaps her Southern guests wouldn't think we were Black. Note my mother was very light and had green/gray/blue eyes more commonly called "cat eyes" among Blacks. My Mother's father, Thomas Marion of Charlotte, North Carolina was a Quadroon and her mother's mother, Mama Dicie was a full bloodied Cherokee Indian from Pee Dee River, South Carolina. My Mother's grandfather, Papa Wolfe's father was from Liberia and his tribe is unknown to the family. We are presently not in a position to do any DNA testing on Papa Wolfe for an exact match with any of the 28 main tribes that make up present day Liberia. These assertions about Papa Wolfe's tribe in Liberia are inconclusive and but the jury is still out on this subject.. as we uncover new facts and records about our vast extensive family history that covers four major continents.
Blogger Black Buzz was 15 years of age at the time of this trip to California. All the Caucasians with whom we were traveling witnessed these Jim Crow incidents firsthand.
Black Buzz says he didn't see any other Blacks at said Guild Conventions.
Most of the daily and weekly corporate white owned newspapers in the USA employed very few Blacks as reporters, editorial writers, clerks, cashiers, etc. in 1958.
The New York Post employed a Black reporter by the name of Ted Poston at the time but he was not an official or officer in the Newspaper Guild as was my mother. Mr. Poston also wrote a weekly column titled "Harlem Shadows" for the Pittsburgh Courier.
I have learned through my research, that in 1935, Mr. Poston led a strike for union recognition at the Amsterdam News. The campaign was successful. Thus the Black employees got their first signed contract between Black employees and their Employers. However Mr. Poston later said proudly that it cost him his job with the paper because they found a way to fire him.
Eventually Mrs. Beatrice Saunders Robinson became the Courier's office manger. She worked for the Courier from 1941 until her retirement in 1980. What a true pioneer.
*In 1973, blogger Black Buzz worked for the Governor's Office of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, Pittsburgh Regional Office. I had a case against the ABC Motel in Ligonier, PA for a refusal to accommodate a Black couple from Colorado. The Black couple had made their reservation with said ABC Motel but after they arrived, the motel owners informed the couple that there were no accommodations available.
To make a long important story short, I found reasonable cause (discrimination to credit the allegations of the complaint of the Black couple) and a very appropriate remedy was obtained for the Black couple in question.
I also had a refusal to accommodate case for a group of Blacks from New York against the largest Motel in Grove City, PA. After the group had made reservations for said motel they were told upon arrival that no rooms were available. This case occurred in 1974 and reasonable cause was found in this complaint to credit the allegations of said charge. We entered into a consent order and decree with damages etc.
I had other cases of a similar nature at the Commission which are too numerous to go into at this moment. But the driving force throughout my adulthood in fighting discrimination has been as a result of those horrible nefarious experiences I had with those Jim Crow incidents back in 1958 and because of the other pervasive discrimination and racism that still exist in many forms.
Just last year in the "Windy City"(Chicago), a night club/bar refused to service a group of Black students from Washington University (St. Louis) while serving 200 of their fellow White classmates. The club in question was not private and therefore was open to the public. The owners claimed that the Black students were not dressed appropriately. There are many such incidents as the one in Chicago all around the good Old USA and enforcement on the local, federal and state levels is virtually non-existent. It is a known fact that many of these Local, State, Federal Civil Rights and Human Relations Agencies and Commissions suffer from bureaucratic inertia.
There is more to the rest of the story !
Monday, February 1, 2010
African Manuscripts Rewriting History
Black Buzz News Service
Oblong, Illinois
February 1, 2010
Archives of BBNS.
The below article titled African Manuscripts Rewriting History was written by Ron Grossman, staff reporter for the Chicago Tribune on April 9, 2001.
African Manuscripts Rewritng History
It was the kind of day which every scholar dreams. Professor John Hunwick was in Timbuktu, and a young man who knew of his interest in African History invited him to see the family library.
Leading the professor into a small room in his modest house,the men lifted the lid on an old trunk filled with manuscripts.
"By the third one,my eyes were popping out of my head," recalled Hunwick, sitting in his office at Northwestern University."I'd never seen anything quite like them before."
Nor had any other Westerner---- and , precisely, for that reason ,the contents of the trunk are expected to profoundly alter long-accepted views of African history and civilization ,and many shaped by racial prejudice rather than scientific inquiry.
Even among scholars, Africa often is dismissed as a continent lacking written records, one of the hallmarks of civilization.For decades, Hunwick has been patiently hunting down evidence to the contrary.
Now, with the help of the Timbuktu manuscripts he first saw on Aug. 24, 1999, he is poised to give the death blow to the view that writing was absent in Black societies.
The Ford Foundation is helping too : It recently gave Hunwick and Northwestern $ 1 million to establish an Institute for the study of written traditions in sub-Saharan Africa.
Hunwick himself has too much scholarly reserve to boast of his find, especially publicly. But his academic peers have no such reticence in talking about the hoard :3000 manuscripts ranging from letters and fragments of works to complete books and covering a range of subjects that include theology, jurisprudence, and history.
Sean O'Fahey, a colleague at Northwestern even likens Hunwick's discovery to the recovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"Or, you could think of it as like coming upon another Anglo-Saxon chronicle that gave us a new view of the early history of England,"
"It really is monumental, said David Robinson, professor of Africa history at Michigan State University.
Until recently, even distinguished scholars would have pooh-poohed the idea that such a cache of historical documents could exist in the heart of Africa.
To be sure, a tiny group of specialists recognized that Africans had a written tradition.But even such a celebrated historian as H.Trevor-Roper wrote in 1963 :"Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none :There is only history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness. "
The centerpiece of Hunwick's find in modern-day Mali was a book by Mahmud al-Kati, an African historian who wrote in the 16th Century.
Timbuktu was then the center of a flourishing culture, and its strategic positions on the Niger River made the city the commercial hub of West Africa.
The version of al Kati's chronicle that Hunwick found contained previously unknown material from al Kati's predecessors--which now pushes our historical knowledge of that part of the continent back to the mid-15th Century.
Ismail Haidara, the young man who showed the work to Hunwick is descended from al Kati, whose, family has handed the manuscripts from one generation to the next ever since his death in 1592.
As his name might suggest ,al Kati was a Muslim, like many people in Timbuktu, and he wrote in Arabic ,the holy language of Islam. But he wasn't an Arab.
He was a Black African---- a fact many Western would find difficult to reconcile with their preconceptions. Black Africans were supposed to be illiterate, at least until 19th Century Christian missionaries taught them how to read and created written forms for native languages.
Oral Traditions
In recent years, anthropologists have helped scholars in other fields to recognize the importance of oral traditions both as markers of culture and as way to establish the history of non- literate peoples.
Yet that very recognition also can contribute to the misconception that peoples with rich oral traditions couldn't, at the same time, have a written history.
"Europeans liked to think of Africa as a continent of song and dance," Hunwick said."Black Africans weren't supposed to know about writing, which is how Trevor-Roper could think them as lacking a record of past and thus without a history. "
As Islam spread across Africa during the Middle Ages, Hunwick said knowledge of writing passed from Arabs of the continent's northern regions to black societies farther south. For the most part ,those converts read and wrote Arabic; but in some cases they also used the Arabic alphabet to create written forms of local languages such as Fulani.
The process ,he noted ,was remarkably similar to the transmission of writing among European peoples.The adapted their alphabet from the Greeks , for example, and in turn the Latin alphabet was adopted by French, Spanish, English, and German speakers and others to give written form to their languages.
But the role of Arabic in African literacy was largely overlooked until recently, even by Africans themselves.
Early in his scholarly career, the British-born Hunwick taught at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. "There was a classics department where Latin was taught, because the University had been established by the British when the country was their colony," Hunwick recalled. "British there was no department of Arabic studies.I convinced the dean to establish one on the argument that Arabic was the Latin of Africa."
Slaves in America
One piece of evidence for that statement is that a number of black Africans brought to North America as slaves were literate in Arabic. One of the earliest autobiographies by an American slave was written in Arabic by Umar ibn Sayyid, who was held in bondage on a North Carolina plantation.
The thought that blacks could read and write was as troubling for American slaveholders as it was for European colonists,Hunwick noted.So if a slave was literate, both ruling groups reasoned that must mean that he or she wasn't really a black African but a " Moor-that is darker skinned Arab.
When a white American published an account of another literate slave,Abdul Rahaman, he went to great pains to establish the slave's identity as a Moor-- in face of contradictory evidence, such as Rahaman's extremely dark skin."Constant exposure to a vertical sun for many years, together with privations incident to the lowest order of community, and an inattention to cleanliness, will produce a very material change in the complexion," the author assured his white readers.
It was the need to combat just that kind of racial prejudice that drew Hunwick into African studies. When he was a young man in the 1950's Great Britain still had compulsory military service, which he served in Somalia, in Eastern Africa.
"I was an officer but not a gentlemen,"Hunwick said, explaining that contrary to prevailing colonialist mores he socialized with the African troops under his command. He was impressed by the egalitarian quality of their society, which contrasted sharply with the rigid class lines he had seen in England.
He also discovered how wide the compass of writing was in Africa, despite what history books of the day said.
400 manuscripts
In 1964, he began traveling through Northern Nigeria, searching out manuscripts in private hands and microfilming them. Eventually, Hunwick located and filmed some 400 such manuscripts, making them available for the first time to Western scholarship.
Hunwick's infectious enthusiasm has influenced two generations of younger Africanists, noted University of Illinois history professor Charles S. Stewart. Those scholars continue to battle the older image of Africa as a continent where civilization was unknown before the coming of the white man.
"Materials like those Hunwick has uncovered,"Stewart said,are the building blocks for redressing the racism still inherent in many westerners'views of Africa."
* Every month at the Black Buzz News Service is so-called Black History Month. In our communication, fact and statement of fact should remain paramount while subjectivity may remain or be relegated to a position of secondary consideration.
Oblong, Illinois
February 1, 2010
Archives of BBNS.
The below article titled African Manuscripts Rewriting History was written by Ron Grossman, staff reporter for the Chicago Tribune on April 9, 2001.
African Manuscripts Rewritng History
It was the kind of day which every scholar dreams. Professor John Hunwick was in Timbuktu, and a young man who knew of his interest in African History invited him to see the family library.
Leading the professor into a small room in his modest house,the men lifted the lid on an old trunk filled with manuscripts.
"By the third one,my eyes were popping out of my head," recalled Hunwick, sitting in his office at Northwestern University."I'd never seen anything quite like them before."
Nor had any other Westerner---- and , precisely, for that reason ,the contents of the trunk are expected to profoundly alter long-accepted views of African history and civilization ,and many shaped by racial prejudice rather than scientific inquiry.
Even among scholars, Africa often is dismissed as a continent lacking written records, one of the hallmarks of civilization.For decades, Hunwick has been patiently hunting down evidence to the contrary.
Now, with the help of the Timbuktu manuscripts he first saw on Aug. 24, 1999, he is poised to give the death blow to the view that writing was absent in Black societies.
The Ford Foundation is helping too : It recently gave Hunwick and Northwestern $ 1 million to establish an Institute for the study of written traditions in sub-Saharan Africa.
Hunwick himself has too much scholarly reserve to boast of his find, especially publicly. But his academic peers have no such reticence in talking about the hoard :3000 manuscripts ranging from letters and fragments of works to complete books and covering a range of subjects that include theology, jurisprudence, and history.
Sean O'Fahey, a colleague at Northwestern even likens Hunwick's discovery to the recovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"Or, you could think of it as like coming upon another Anglo-Saxon chronicle that gave us a new view of the early history of England,"
"It really is monumental, said David Robinson, professor of Africa history at Michigan State University.
Until recently, even distinguished scholars would have pooh-poohed the idea that such a cache of historical documents could exist in the heart of Africa.
To be sure, a tiny group of specialists recognized that Africans had a written tradition.But even such a celebrated historian as H.Trevor-Roper wrote in 1963 :"Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none :There is only history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness. "
The centerpiece of Hunwick's find in modern-day Mali was a book by Mahmud al-Kati, an African historian who wrote in the 16th Century.
Timbuktu was then the center of a flourishing culture, and its strategic positions on the Niger River made the city the commercial hub of West Africa.
The version of al Kati's chronicle that Hunwick found contained previously unknown material from al Kati's predecessors--which now pushes our historical knowledge of that part of the continent back to the mid-15th Century.
Ismail Haidara, the young man who showed the work to Hunwick is descended from al Kati, whose, family has handed the manuscripts from one generation to the next ever since his death in 1592.
As his name might suggest ,al Kati was a Muslim, like many people in Timbuktu, and he wrote in Arabic ,the holy language of Islam. But he wasn't an Arab.
He was a Black African---- a fact many Western would find difficult to reconcile with their preconceptions. Black Africans were supposed to be illiterate, at least until 19th Century Christian missionaries taught them how to read and created written forms for native languages.
Oral Traditions
In recent years, anthropologists have helped scholars in other fields to recognize the importance of oral traditions both as markers of culture and as way to establish the history of non- literate peoples.
Yet that very recognition also can contribute to the misconception that peoples with rich oral traditions couldn't, at the same time, have a written history.
"Europeans liked to think of Africa as a continent of song and dance," Hunwick said."Black Africans weren't supposed to know about writing, which is how Trevor-Roper could think them as lacking a record of past and thus without a history. "
As Islam spread across Africa during the Middle Ages, Hunwick said knowledge of writing passed from Arabs of the continent's northern regions to black societies farther south. For the most part ,those converts read and wrote Arabic; but in some cases they also used the Arabic alphabet to create written forms of local languages such as Fulani.
The process ,he noted ,was remarkably similar to the transmission of writing among European peoples.The adapted their alphabet from the Greeks , for example, and in turn the Latin alphabet was adopted by French, Spanish, English, and German speakers and others to give written form to their languages.
But the role of Arabic in African literacy was largely overlooked until recently, even by Africans themselves.
Early in his scholarly career, the British-born Hunwick taught at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. "There was a classics department where Latin was taught, because the University had been established by the British when the country was their colony," Hunwick recalled. "British there was no department of Arabic studies.I convinced the dean to establish one on the argument that Arabic was the Latin of Africa."
Slaves in America
One piece of evidence for that statement is that a number of black Africans brought to North America as slaves were literate in Arabic. One of the earliest autobiographies by an American slave was written in Arabic by Umar ibn Sayyid, who was held in bondage on a North Carolina plantation.
The thought that blacks could read and write was as troubling for American slaveholders as it was for European colonists,Hunwick noted.So if a slave was literate, both ruling groups reasoned that must mean that he or she wasn't really a black African but a " Moor-that is darker skinned Arab.
When a white American published an account of another literate slave,Abdul Rahaman, he went to great pains to establish the slave's identity as a Moor-- in face of contradictory evidence, such as Rahaman's extremely dark skin."Constant exposure to a vertical sun for many years, together with privations incident to the lowest order of community, and an inattention to cleanliness, will produce a very material change in the complexion," the author assured his white readers.
It was the need to combat just that kind of racial prejudice that drew Hunwick into African studies. When he was a young man in the 1950's Great Britain still had compulsory military service, which he served in Somalia, in Eastern Africa.
"I was an officer but not a gentlemen,"Hunwick said, explaining that contrary to prevailing colonialist mores he socialized with the African troops under his command. He was impressed by the egalitarian quality of their society, which contrasted sharply with the rigid class lines he had seen in England.
He also discovered how wide the compass of writing was in Africa, despite what history books of the day said.
400 manuscripts
In 1964, he began traveling through Northern Nigeria, searching out manuscripts in private hands and microfilming them. Eventually, Hunwick located and filmed some 400 such manuscripts, making them available for the first time to Western scholarship.
Hunwick's infectious enthusiasm has influenced two generations of younger Africanists, noted University of Illinois history professor Charles S. Stewart. Those scholars continue to battle the older image of Africa as a continent where civilization was unknown before the coming of the white man.
"Materials like those Hunwick has uncovered,"Stewart said,are the building blocks for redressing the racism still inherent in many westerners'views of Africa."
* Every month at the Black Buzz News Service is so-called Black History Month. In our communication, fact and statement of fact should remain paramount while subjectivity may remain or be relegated to a position of secondary consideration.
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