Tag Archives: BlackHistory

Repost of Review of A Free Man of Color and His Hotel: Race, Reconstruction, and the Role of the Federal Government, Plus A Rant

Found lots of new notes on this book, so am reposting the updated post, which incorporates a few explanatory links as well… -Shira

Context, Critical Thinking, Continuous Learning: Project Do Better

     This might become more of a rant, but I doubt it.  This book needs more circulation, and Black History needs more attention.  See the book review first (for which I just found my reading notes in my old Research notebook, and have updated the post, May, 2023…):

A Free Man of Color and His Hotel: Race, Reconstruction, and the Role of the Federal GovernmentA Free Man of Color and His Hotel: Race, Reconstruction, and the Role of the Federal Government by Carol Gelderman 

     Here is yet another important book on Black History in DC that I read in 2010, but neglected to review, in the rush to leave DC, and then finish editing Stayed on Freedom’s Call (linked to below, in the .sig…). Gelderman’s book (of which I seem to recall confusing at first with another book carrying a title like ‘The Wormley Hotel’ or such, which likely explains the long title without Wormley’s name for this book…) details the success of…

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Book Review: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

        I was shocked when I saw how bravely Tom stood up to his ‘master’ and refused to obey the order to whip his fellow slave, knowing that the price would inevitably be a painful death. I see that the sacrifice is now-a-days considered to be giving in, but in that context, under those circumstances, his only choices were obey or dis-obey, non-violently or make life even worse for the others and himself. Given those realities, he acted heroically, not as we currently use the phrase ‘an Uncle Tom.’    Note that this is a saying within the Black American community, at least in the (American) South, of which (Washington,) DC is a part of (where I am from), and that many of our families were also part of The Great Migration (I’ll link this to the review of Wilkerson’s excellent book on the topic when I finish it later…).  My mother’s paternal paternal (her father’s paternal side) side arrived from Georgia in the 1920’s, while her maternal side was from central Virginia (Byrd plantation in Goochland county).  Even her paternal maternal side came, originally, from VA, five generations ago.  My father’s side is all from DC, with the Booth’s originally from Port Tobacco, MD, apparently.  So, even though many people think of the DC and Maryland areas as north, it is certainly not, as Maryland was very much a slave state, and even the District, until the Compensated Emancipation by Lincoln (nine months before his Emancipation Proclamation, btw, we were the first, I believe, to be freed, but in the case of Federal City residents, as it was known back then, only if the owner took an oath of loyalty to the Union, and then he was paid 300 dollars per freed slave, if memory serves).  So, remember, there is history of a Peculiar (yes, pun intended) kind wrapped around the term “an Uncle Tom,” for us in the Black Community.

   Obviously, this meticulously researched book provided me with both linguistic background for my wip Who By Fire  whobyfireiwilltmpcover   (in terms of how various classes of people spoke during this period), and with the author’s extensive notes at the back of the copy I borrowed from the DC Public Library, with her annotations responding to contemporary criticisms of her novel with verified incidents and records backing up each and every fact or story particle in her book.  And also answering the complaint from many rich Southerners that “for every one master like that one, there are a hundred good masters.”

Shira

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Click here to read, if you like:

Shira

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Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Novel as Not Even Thinly Veiled Autobiography??

    Probably not a good idea, at least so all of the writing experts tell us.  But why, or why not?  I’ve heard it quoted that ‘all novels are autobiographical,’ which makes sense given that any and every line one writes tells much about the writer, no matter what that writer’s intention may have been.  Every word you write reveals something about you.  But you never have a chance to explain or give your own interpretation to your writing.  Once it is out in the world, readers will see in your writing what they wish to see.  Even if it is a true event which they would prefer (and you would also have preferred, for that matter) were not true, or a time when you wondered if you yourself might not be some alien artifact merely sent here to record these odd human goings-on, or if you always thought that life might be some gross diabolical experiment, or maybe even just a fun bet, between two or more un-empathetic beings or species.  Every word your write will pass through the filter of each and every person who reads those words, and thus be judged according to someone else’s experiences and ways of thinking.  From a light-skinned Black child being taunted as ‘white’ by other Black kids, painful for that child, but reduced to whining angst by others, to the fear of a woman that she might be seen as dating across races being turned into mere criticism of interracial dating or marriage.  Our experiences and the thoughts and feelings within those events are always subject to interpretation, measurement, being weighed in the balance, and found wanting by others who have not experienced those or similar things.  The feeling of lost opportunities when potential and ought-to-have-been alliances turn out to be physical aggressions of the first order, all downgraded to a mere fight.  The feeling, when told to take care because your skin is just the right color to get you excluded from every group you have ever even heard of, judged to be simple self-pity.  Your desire to explain that not a single human being ever born has a “pure” bloodline, wiped out by those who simply want you to suffer because you are a convenient target, when they are in fact, acting in precise accord with the racists from the other side who also agree that “the races don’t mix.”  The irony and the agony of being a human being, when it is all so clearly an exercise in futility, just as the writer of Kohelet, aka  Ecclesiastes,  said so long ago:  “הבל” /  “emptiness” -it may all really be emptiness, but we must keep trying, anyway.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here for:

Learning through TV or Film story:

                                                   Babylon5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin,  La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, or El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

or

Learning in the obvious way: Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

     Thoughtful Reading Writers, please consider reading and then also writing something about #ProjectDoBetter.    Phase I includes freely sharing with others about how consumer debt  statutes-of-limitations   related Statutes of Limitations are meant to protect society, if only everyone knew about them.  The work is still heavy, and the workers are still few.   But we human beings  can still seriously Do Better.  cropped-dobettercover.jpg

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

aka:

ShiraDest  (and by the way, I have written several narratives about these incidents mentioned above, if anyone wants me to link in to them either by editing this post, or in the comments to this post later…  Just let me know in a comment here.)

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Thought, On Octavia Butler’s Thoughts On Hierarchy…

      I still find it unfortunate that such a prescient and visionary writer on humanity never gets the level of attention that Toni Morrison gets, despite posing questions just as important as those posed by Morrison’s works, and while bearing witness just as poignantly, if not in the same literary way.  So, there is an idea that has been bothering me ever since I first read Dawn, the first book in Octavia Butler’s Imago trilogy.  imago   (Oops, I mean in the Xenogenesis trilogy…) She claimed, via the protagonist, sorry, not  Olamina, from the Parable books, but from yet another extremely well portrayed female protagonist’s (Lilith?) discussion with one of the aliens who rescued Earth in order to combine themselves with Humanity to form a new species, basically that our hierarchical nature, and one other thing, I believe it was our propensity toward violence, were essentially a deadly combination for the survival of the human race.   Well, if that is indeed the case, then how can people like Ryan Eisner in The Chalice and the Blade, if I recall correctly, and the other women who have been claiming that there was a type of societal situation in which a separate living (from men) women’s utopia existed on earth, about 20,000 years ago, before agriculture got to be large-scale and private property came into existence.  If this was the case, then that would mean that women lived in harmony together with no hierarchy.  But, this idea does not make sense if the human species from the time of either Homo Habilius or Homo Erectus, well before Homo sapiens, was always hierarchical.  All of the great apes are, and so, it seems, are most mammals, in general.  So if capitalism is based on large scale private property, and large scale property is based on hierarchy, which, in its turn, is based on power and dominance, then it seems that the instinct to dominate is the actual problem with human beings.  If that is the case, then we are really dealing with the question of how to educate ourselves out of one of the most powerful instincts we have, no pun intended, and that leads to the question of whether we even have time to address the underlying issues around the consequences of that drive for power over one another, while simultaneously saving ourselves from extinction.  Education over time could certainly do it, if we all bent our collective wills toward helping each other, but how do we do that?  How can we make that happen?

***

Shira

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Click here to see:

Shira

Creative Commons License
Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Where Are the Eat-Together Urban CLTs?

    This post is a request for brain cycles.  I need help searching for any urban communities where people eat together, live together, and work to build found family, preferably on land that is part of a Community Land Trust (or as part of a community that intentionally works to build on a basis of trust and intention to increase both affordable housing and democratic processes), particularly in cities with actually usable public transportation, like San Francisco, DC, or New York…  I had initially wanted to include an acre per person in Project Do Better, but dropped that after seeing the high levels of opposition to the idea, and instead added both Baby Bonds and the idea of a 20x20x20 Tiny Condo per person, with the hope that some form of land sharing could become more viable over time, as the phases of Project Do Better help to build broad coalitions and develop greater cooperation among all citizens and residents, over the 70 year time span (give or take a decade), during which the Project initially unfolds (as modified by different community organizers who edit versions of their own communities’ Do Better mancommon_place_of_studio_apartment  While I have seen a few examples of CLTs, and seen them presented as a means of increasing renter-ownership, I have been wondering if they could also be part of a set of economic reforms that allow for building democracy through greater shared land ownership in common, and indeed, it seems that others also believe that the exercise of civil rights required the security that land ownership provides.”   Such shared ownership of land seems a reasonable solution, since individual land ownership is mostly out of reach for most of us, and given the additional fact that: 

“In 1910, Black farmers owned fifteen million acres of farmland. By 1982, that had shrunk to three million acres, an 80 percent decline. See Abril Castro and Calus Z. Willingham, “Progressive Governance Can Turn the Tide for Black Farmers,” Center for American Progress, April 3, 2019. 

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts on Intentional Community, eating together, and land ownership, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses the idea of shared community to make a difference in our society.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

aka Shira, or:

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

old version of Black and Jewish Americans fight together for human dignity… in Spain…

     A newer post mentions my all time favorite show, El Ministerio del Tiempo (sorry Babylon 5!!), and how an old friend told me, after watching an episode together, that one of her relatives had  gone to Spain, and fought in the Spanish Civil War as part of the Lincoln Brigade which turned out to have been known officially as the Lincoln Batallion.

(see link to the full post after this image…)  lincoln_battalion

Black and Jewish citizens  from the USA fought valiantly for freedom.

In honor,   for the  victory against racism overseas and at home, and to

keep on cooperating…  To Do Better…  DoBetterCover

Shira Destinie Jones

Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
aka online as ShiraDest, aka as just Shira;
originally posted on March 16th, 12017 HE

Review: H. Jacobs’ Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl, Family & Novel Research  

        I mentioned, last week, how I kept feeling bothered by my family history, as if I were  ignoring some ancestors who wanted, demanded, to be remembered, in some way.   I also mentioned the reactions, rather unfavorable, to Louisa and her mother H. Jacobs Created with GIMP  narration of Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl, which was long said to have been fiction before finally being accepted as truth.  Professor Fegan yellin’s book is a superset of this particular book, as the original work itself along with Yellin’s commentaries and sources.  Here is a new-ish look at that initial book by H. Jacobs, written by Prof. FaganYellin:

 

Prof. Yellin has not only brought to life a remarkable woman whose daughter could have ‘passed,’ but chose not to. Yellin has brought to light, through the life of Harriet Jacobs a series of community connections from the Deep South to Boston which were created and used to help people in the most desperate of circumstances during the overcrowded wartime Federal City.

 

       She was referring to the book by Jacobs herself, which I was stunned to see modern reviewers reviling for its mention of the violations of enslaved women.  Yes, it is difficult to read about, but yes, it needs to be dealt with, and still has relevance today, as T. A. Gordon pointed out (reviewed recently…).  I still shudder with horror at the thought of what may have to happen to our story’s Fancy, Lucy, before the end: FancyQuadroonNYMet  Horrifyingly enough, even I., our hero, himself, could also be treated as Fancies under the worst of circumstances.

But, at last, this novel in progress, Who By Fire, finally seems to be coming together, but  

  While my research on The Fancy Trade for this novel project, which I paused to write a nonfiction book, and restarted, centered on that of women, boys were also obviously available as part of this trade.

I had a dream about this topic, one that was just a bit too personal, frankly, as some ancestor seemed to find it necessary to put me directly into the skin of a Fancy Maid, in this dream, and I felt compelled to write a short short about it, which accidentally turned into the series Ann & Anna (referenced in the .sig at the end of this post…).  I will admit that I knew the history and the locations behind this short short that turned into a serial series well in advance, which is probably why I was having a nightmare related to the topic: BchrFancySaleBigger      Ann and Anna was so easy to write that I still keep asking  myself  what is  so blooming difficult about this project,  Who By Fire, whose suffering is not unlike that of Harriet Jacobs.   Then, I keep remembering  that I already knew everything about the Ann and Anna series, because I was using a historical personage with a recorded itinerary, and adding another main character whose voice I knew extraordinarily well, partly based on all of the Victorian era novels I read or listen to because they are available for free, now being in the Public Domain.

Thank you again, Project Gutenberg and Librivox.org!!

 

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

     Historical Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.   Sharing my research for this historical  fantasy novel (Who By Fire is still intended to become an urban portal fantasy, but this research really went more into my earlier series Ann and Anna…) is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

 
 

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Writing Wednesdays Review of T. Gordon’s Fancy Maids Research For This Novel  

       Last week I mentioned stories that have gone untold, like those of the “Fancy Maids”, the Quadroons and other light skinned Black women, which have been ignored.  This week I want to mention a 2015 Master’s Thesis (The Fancy Trade and the Commodification of Rape in the Sexual Economy of 19th Century U.S. Slavery) I reviewed by T. A. Gordon, that helped shed much light on that odious trade and the consequences of that trade that stretch into the present day.

  Gordon’s short (relatively speaking) master’s thesis presents an excellent argument for a new analytical approach to studying the exploitation of enslaved women which makes it more possible to take into account their legal inability to give or withhold consent. Redefining the way we look at sexual exploitation is crucial to stop the on-going blame toward sexual trafficking victims, particularly women of color, which began with the scapegoating of mixed-race women legally treated as sexual objects and sold as such, as part of upholding white supremacy by humiliating both women and men of color, while blaming those very same women of color for their own victimization.  Gordon holds up the Plaçage system as integral with the auction block for enslaved quadroons and octaroons, showing how both Free women of color and their enslaved counterparts were exploited by a system of white male privilege and fantasization.  A system which continues today. She points out that the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding this system needs to be ended, and hopes to give voice to those voiceless women of color exploited then and now. This work is a good start, which I hope Gordon will continue on into PhD work.

Some reading notes include the fact that: “Specifically, the Catholic … stressed the humanity of slaves … In contrast.. British… placed the…property rights above all other consideration.” (ftnote 37) Thus, race relations operated in a more rigid…hierarchy … opposition to manumission and denial of opportunities for [slaves] become hallmarks of … of slavery in the… United States.    (my comment –That explains alot…)

and

“Louisiana’s free people of color population grew
exponentially during Spanish rule, especially in New Orleans. In her study on the
position of free African Americans within larger slave societies, historian Kimberly
Hanger examines the growth of the free people of color community … whom she calls
libres…  in Spanish Louisiana, their lasting effect on New Orleans culture, “
 
and,
on page 33, 70.21% “”…these factors are just as important in understanding how
Louisiana’s uniqueness contributed to the allure… of the fancy …in the Anglo-American mind. …these women became the scapegoats … Some of the women were quadroons. In the years following the Haitian Revolution, the quadroon as a racial category was gendered… fantasy of sexual triumph supplied an antidote to the terror inspired by…black man”
 
and, most pertinently for Lucy:  “…beautiful young mulatto girls for sale…these … command higher prices than the ablest male laborers…the conspiracy of silence surrounding African American women’s sexual histories …contributes to the continuation of the oppression of women of color in present day society…intersectional lens permits a discourse on the rape of enslaved women of color and … in the present context.”
 

   Her thesis can be found freely online, and is only 55 pages, for those who wish to read the original, which I highly recommend.  

 

     I still shudder with horror at the thought of what may have to happen to our story’s Fancy, Lucy, before the end: FancyQuadroonNYMet  Horrifyingly enough, even I., our hero, himself, could also be treated as a Fancy,  under the worst of circumstances.

     This novel in progress, Who By Fire, continues to torture me, but  whobyfireiwilltmpcover

  like the research on The Fancy Trade for this novel project, it needs to be brought out into the light of day, to allow us to help heal our civilization, to paraphrase Toni Morrison.

   I had a dream about this topic, one that was just a bit too personal, frankly, as some ancestor seemed to find it necessary to put me directly into the skin of a Fancy Maid, in this dream, and I felt compelled to write a short short about it, which accidentally turned into the series Ann & Anna (referenced in the .sig at the end of this post…).  I will admit that I knew the history and the locations behind this short short that turned into a serial series well in advance, which is probably why I was having a nightmare related to the topic: BchrFancySaleBigger      Ann and Anna was so easy to write that I still keep asking  myself  what is  so blooming difficult about this project,  Who By Fire, and then I keep remembering  that I already knew everything about the Ann and Anna series, because I was using a historical personage with a recorded itinerary, and adding another main character whose voice I knew extraordinarily well, partly based on all of the Victorian era novels I read or listen to because they are available for free, now being in the Public Domain.

Thank you again, to Tiye A. Gordon for her courageous work!!

 

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This novel is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

 
 

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Writing Process Wednesdays, and How Ancestry Spurred a Novel  

      So I kept feeling bothered by my family history, as if I were annoying some ancestors that wanted to be remembered, in some way.  I think about what Toni Morrison said about the work of a Black woman who writes as being to “bear witness” to what has been suppressed, and of all the stories that have gone untold, those of the “Fancy Maids”, the Quadroons and other light skinned women, have been ignored the most, as with the reaction to Louisa and her mother H. Jacobs narration of Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl (review coming next week…), which was long said to have been fiction before finally being accepted as truth.

     In the first few weeks of starting to plan Who By Fire, I tried to write up some plot points in the two or three days after thinking of the idea.  I kept trying to force a female protagonist into the role, but kept coming back to a male protag.   I decided that I had the entire story plotted and still couldn’t stop thinking about it, so it was time to name my protag.  I spent a day or two mulling it over until suddenly the idea of a runaway slave from MD fit, and the G’town slaves sold off in 1838 immediately made it all fit together.

  He had to be the one who got away.

     I still shudder with horror at the thought of what may have to happen to our story’s Fancy, Lucy, before the end: FancyQuadroonNYMet  Horrifyingly enough, even I., our hero, himself, could also be treated as Fancies under the worst of circumstances.

But, at last, this novel in progress, Who By Fire, finally seems to be coming together, but  whobyfireiwilltmpcover

  While my research on The Fancy Trade for this novel project, which I paused to write a nonfiction book, and restarted, centered on that of women, boys were also obviously available as part of this trade.

I had a dream about this topic, one that was just a bit too personal, frankly, as some ancestor seemed to find it necessary to put me directly into the skin of a Fancy Maid, in this dream, and I felt compelled to write a short short about it, which accidentally turned into the series Ann & Anna (referenced in the .sig at the end of this post…).  I will admit that I knew the history and the locations behind this short short that turned into a serial series well in advance, which is probably why I was having a nightmare related to the topic: BchrFancySaleBigger      Ann and Anna was so easy to write that I still keep asking  myself  what is  so blooming difficult about this project,  Who By Fire, and then I keep remembering  that I already knew everything about the Ann and Anna series, because I was using a historical personage with a recorded itinerary, and adding another main character whose voice I knew extraordinarily well, partly based on all of the Victorian era novels I read or listen to because they are available for free, now being in the Public Domain.

Thank you again, Project Gutenberg and Librivox.org!!

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This novel is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.