The power of that line – “I do know this” – is CellyBlue’s moral conviction about the force of history, of which this is but a short caption,
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"There is no American history without African American history,” The Black experience, she said, is embedded in "everything we think of as 'American history.'
-Sara Clarke Kaplan, executive director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C.
Woodson chose February so that this event coincided with the birth dates of two men important to Black history: Frederick Douglass, who celebrated his birthday on February 14, and Abraham Lincoln, born February 12. So, if asked why February is such an important date for black American history, educate your friends and tell them it is not because it is the shortest month of the year, but because of the significance of the month. Negro History Week expanded to Negro History Month in some places as early as the 1940s, and in 1976, more than two decades after Woodson’s death, U.S. Pres. Gerald Ford called on Americans to recognize and celebrate Black History Month.
And so, we do.
African American’s have been in the United States before it was a United States. With the arrival of 20 Africans in 1619 and their landing in the English colony of Virginia. These individuals were not enslaved people but Indentured servants, just as many of the white settlers from Europe were. Indentured servants are persons bound to an employer for a limited number of years. They worked for free to pay for passage to the Americas, room, and board. They usually worked for five years and afterwards received land and money.
* * *
So, what changed? The legal establishment of Black chattel slavery in Virginia in 1661 and in all the English colonies by 1750. Black people were easily distinguished by their skin color from the rest of the populace, making them highly visible targets for enslavement. Moreover, the development of the belief that they were an “inferior” race with a “heathen” culture made it easier for whites to rationalize Black slavery.
“We Black folk, our history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is. If we Black folk perish, America will perish.”- Writer Richard Wright
This complex of inferiority of one race by skin color for many Americans I believe still exist today. A person’s skin color is the result of where you live in the world, it is evolutionary pressures favoring the presence in the skin of a dark pigment called melanin in populations in equatorial climates. BECAUSE ITS HOT-OKAY. You need protection from the sun and the melanin in the skin helps with this. Education and Books are so important. (But I digress)
CellyBlue engages in a polite understatement with, “This complex of inferiority of one race by skin color for many Americans I believe still exist today.” I am a 76-year-old white man, and I will confirm, I grew up in the 1950s through the 1960s; saw and experienced this racism; remember Lester Maddox, George Wallace, and Ross Barnett as living men fighting for segregation; and remember all of the civil-rights martyrdom and suffering. This racism is too alive and prospers too well in the open and is unapologetic and aggressive and is attempting, with a considerable amount of help from the U.S. Supreme Court, to revive both Jim Crow AND, to show all rights and righteous struggles are interconnected, are trying, too, to confine women to the role of the Handmaid.
One of the real values in the postings of CellyBlue is her recounting of suffering of Black persons and civil rights leaders.
Here is CellyBlue’s unforgettable telling of an event I remember as a fifteen-year-old boy at the time:
Sept 15, 1963, is the day American terrorism was felt in Birmingham, Alabama.
Warning- This is not a feel good story. The story depicted is the damage the Terrorist inflicted upon the innocent young girls as Birmingham political leaders filled with hate and vitriol assisted. Some of the photos in this post may cause distress.
Viewer Discretion Is Advised
More then 60 years ago, on September 15, 1963 at 10:22 a.m. Members of the American Terrorist Group the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb that exploded in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church and killed 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins and 11 year old Denise McNair. There another 14-22 victims were severely injured.
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963. (Tom Self/ Birmingham News) ORG XMIT: ALBIN
Facts:
On 9/15/1963 at approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man telephoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. 14 year old Carolyn Maull, the Sunday School Secretary answered the phone. The anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes" to the young girl and then Hung Up.
Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded!
The terrorist planted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, close to the basement. According to one survivor, “the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls.”
From the archive of the Guardian. 16 September 1963: Black church bombed in Birmingham, Alabama “One witness said he saw about sixty people stream out of the shattered church, some bleeding. Others emerged from a hole in the wall. Across the street a Negro woman stood weeping. She clasped a little girl’s shoe. “Her daughter was killed,” a bystander said. Two of the dead schoolgirls were aged 14 and another aged 11. One of the children was so badly mutilated that she could only be identified by clothing and a ring”
The pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, recollected in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together".
TOM SELF - Sept 15, 1963
Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Rosamond Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Dionne Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949)—all died instantly.
Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; Addie Mae Collins, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14 (AP Photo file)
The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated that her body could be identified only through her clothing and a ring. Another victim was killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull.
These bombers were the Hamas, ISIS and Al-Qaeda of the 1960s, American Style.
A real treat is the podcast between CellyBlue (in Alabama) and her Sister, Gwen (in Blue-State, Maryland), comparing voting laws and practices, public transportation availability. I enjoy listening to the obvious love between the two Sisters and the spontaneity in the conversation about daily life and civic life that are practical and of vital importance, especially to enable persons to have a voice in their communities. Here is a small series of these Sisterly phone calls:
CellyBlue gives a powerful voice to persons who need to be heard, as here, where she speaks of “Convict Leasing”:
In the great state of Alabama there is a legal system called convict leasing. Well they don’t call it that. But we all know what it is. Convict leasing was an essential part of the Black Codes of the old dity south. Make blacks work for less then nothing until they die.
Is that happening in 21st century America. (Yes). Since 2018, about 575 companies and more than 100 public agencies in Alabama have used incarcerated people as landscapers, janitors, drivers, metal fabricators and fast-food workers, the lawsuit states, reaping an annual benefit of $450 million.
Then Alabama got sued and it all came to light.
In their complaint, plaintiffs alleged that Alabama generates an annual $450 million from forced labor. The inmates work against their will and the ADOC takes 40% of gross earnings “purportedly ‘to assist in defraying the cost of his/her incarceration,'” asserted the complaint. Plaintiffs noted that the amount is “shocking” given that ADOC’s facilities were recently found by the Department of Justice to be significantly deficient.
One individual, Lakiera Walker, was incarcerated from 2007 to 2023. Walker said that for years, she was forced to perform long hours of uncompensated work that included housekeeping, stripping floors, providing care for mentally disabled or other ill incarcerated people, unloading chemical trucks, working inside freezers, and at Burger King. She said she was paid just $2 per day and was subjected to sexual harassment by a supervising officer.
CellyBlue hits a topic that is agonizing: Violence that women and girls suffer from those they SHOULD have a right to trust — spouse, sibling . . .
Domestic violence and intimate partner abuse are escalating issues in the United States, with statistics revealing a tragic trend that should alarm everyone.
On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States, leading to more than 10 million women and men affected over the course of a year.
1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, sexual violence, and/or stalking, with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner, which includes behaviors like slapping and pushing.
1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner.
1 in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner (data is unavailable for male victims).
1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (e.g., beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner to the point of feeling very fearful or believing they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines nationwide.
The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%.
Intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all violent crime.
Women between the ages of 18-24 are most commonly abused by an intimate partner.
19% of domestic violence incidents involve a weapon.
Domestic victimization is correlated with a higher rate of depression and suicidal behavior.
Only 34% of people injured by intimate partners receive medical care for their injuries.
Additionally:
1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in the U.S. have been raped in their lifetime.
Almost half of female and male rape victims were raped by an acquaintance or an intimate partner.
19.3 million women and 5.1 million men have been stalked in their lifetime, with a significant portion reporting stalking by a current or former intimate partner.
A study of intimate partner homicides found that 20% of victims were not the intimate partners themselves but included family members, friends, neighbors, and others who intervened.
Please visit the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s website at www.ncadv.org for more fact sheets, membership information, and valuable resources.
If you are a victim of domestic violence, The National Domestic Violence Hotline (thehotline.org) allows you to speak confidentially with trained advocates online or by the phone, which they recommend for those who think their online activity is being monitored by their abuser (800-799-7233). They can help survivors develop a plan to achieve safety for themselves and their children. Remember that you are not alone, and there are resources available to support you.
This post resounds with conviction and truth and may be found here:
CellyBlue can CELEBRATE greatness in the midst of tremendous pressure and injustice, as here, where she recounts the highly inspirational story of the great, truly great athlete and runner, Allyson Felix:
This post is an all-too short tribute to a woman who powerfully tells the truth, and whose postings on at least three platforms I follow with great interest, and much more, whom I find deeply inspiring.
CellyBlue — I do know this!
Yes, you do!
Thank you for reading Armando’s Substack. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Thank you so much for that wonderful review. I cannot express my gratitude to you. I hope my writing breaks through, empowers or even embolden. We must remember. Democracy is not death, but she is on life support.
Thank you for this post, Armand. It is easy for people of privilege to be so unaware as to shrug and turn to whatever is most annoying in their own lives. This battle for equality is FAR from over, and the current political engagement with people who hate others because of their race, gender, religion, ethnicity and other factors of "difference" in order to create instability through fomenting violence is unacceptable, full stop. Let's push these sick people back under the rocks they have crawled out from under. The rest of us can get on with respect, decency, inclusion, the bottom line being love of each other as human beings.
Thank you so much for that wonderful review. I cannot express my gratitude to you. I hope my writing breaks through, empowers or even embolden. We must remember. Democracy is not death, but she is on life support.
Thank you for this post, Armand. It is easy for people of privilege to be so unaware as to shrug and turn to whatever is most annoying in their own lives. This battle for equality is FAR from over, and the current political engagement with people who hate others because of their race, gender, religion, ethnicity and other factors of "difference" in order to create instability through fomenting violence is unacceptable, full stop. Let's push these sick people back under the rocks they have crawled out from under. The rest of us can get on with respect, decency, inclusion, the bottom line being love of each other as human beings.