Did you know Oscar Micheaux was the first black filmmaker? He was born into slavery in southern Illinois, but he left home to pursue work as a Pullman Porter on railroads. This was one of the best jobs a black man could have at the time. Still, he had bigger dreams as a writer. He wrote a series of novels, including his most famous, The Homesteader an autobiography of his experiences as a Pullman Porter. Two indie filmmakers made offers to him to buy the rights for that novel but he declined and did it his damn self. He is the first African-American to produce a feature-length film in 1919. Unfortunately his films were often banned from theaters, and/or destroyed, called immoral, and was said to incite crime. His legacy was essentially lost. His movie and movies are often seen as a response to the film that is credited for birthing Hollywood, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth Of A Nation. A three-hour film starting with the Civil War and ending with the Ku Klux Klan riding in to save the South from black rule during the Reconstruction era. The film uses white actors in blackface to portray black men as foaming at the mouth animals. And blackness in the movie is associated with male sexual power, violence, and r*pe. The message is that emancipated slaves are unworthy of being free, they’re uncivilized, and primarily concerned with being free so they could marry white women and prey on them. It was seen by an estimated 200 million Americans by 1946. Micheaux’s films were played in the 700 theatres that were part of the “ghetto circuit.” And was categorized as race films. Woy 🤦🏾♂️. Micheaux was one of the few black independents to survive the historical scrubbing that happens with black history because of the extra miles he went to insure his survival. While on promotional tours, he used his completed films, which he often distributed by hand to waiting theatres, to secure from personal investors the financing for his next project. He passed from heart failure on March 25, 1951 at the age of 67, in Charlotte, North Carolina on a business trip.
Black History 365 | # 111 Saartjie Baartman & The Victorian Bustle Dress
Did you know the upper-class European bustle is rooted in the exploitation of black women? Specifically Saartjie Baartman. A South African woman from the Khoikhoi tribe. God rest her soul. Baartman was forced by William Dunlop and Henrik Cesars to work as a slave. She was put on display at “freak shows” across Paris and London. Later in life, she became associated with an animal exhibitor, who forced Baartman into prostitution. At the age of twenty-six, Baartman died due to an inflammatory disease believed to be syphilis. Now, the Baartman-inspired bustle replaced the hoop skirt to provide wealthy women with a desirable figure that exaggerated the curvature of their butt. If you’re not figuratively blind you might see the newer versions and variations of how this still happens today.
Black History 365 | # 110 Nathan "Uncle Nearest" Green
Did you know Nathan Nearest Green was the first known black master distiller? He specialized in a process that gave whiskey a unique smoothness, known as sugar maple charcoal filtering. It’s a process that has been brought in by slaves who were already using charcoal to filter their water and purify their foods in west Africa. In Lynchburg Tennessee where Green operated as a slave and master distiller he met a young white boy who he taught everything he knew about whiskey. He taught him how to make Tennessee Whiskey. He went on to be known as one of the most famous whiskey makers in the world. His legal name was Jasper Newton. Those in Lynchburg know him as Uncle Jack. The world knows him as Jack Daniels. In 2016, the owners of the Jack Daniels distillery made the decision to finally embrace Green’s legacy and emphasize Nathan Green’s foundational role in their success. Cheers 🥃 .
Black History 365 | # 108 Richard Aoki
Have you heard of Richard Aoki? He was best known as an early member of the Black Panther Party. He was close to Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale and was eventually promoted to the position of Field Marshal. A Japanese man, Aoki was one of several Asian Americans in the Black Panther Party, but the only one to have a formal leadership position. Following Aoki’s death, the FBI’s records on him were obtained showing that over a period of 15 years, he had been an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The records show “that at various points, he provided information that was ‘unique’ and of ‘extreme value.’ He also supplied the Black Panther their first guns. Woy 🤦🏾♂️. In August 1967 the FBI instructed its program “COINTELPRO” to neutralize what they had identified as black nationalist hate groups. And in September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” The FBI’s escalating campaign against the Black Panthers culminated in December 1969. That month a police raid in Chicago resulted in the brutal murder of local Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton and a fellow Panther, Mark Clark. They were met with ninety bullets in his apartment while he laid asleep next to his nine-month pregnant wife. Several days later there was a five-hour police shoot-out at the party’s Southern California headquarters. The measures employed by the FBI were so extreme that the director of the agency later apologized for “wrongful uses of power.” No sh*t. It was originally reported that Aoki died at his home in Berkeley from dialysis complications. Nearly a year later, it was revealed that he had died of suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Black History 365 | # 109 Ida B. Wells
What do you know about Ida B. Wells? Where do we start? She was a journalist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the US in the 1890s. And is the founder of the NAACP. She became disenchanted with the organization’s white and elite black leadership and distanced herself from the organization. She then founded and became the first president of the Negro Fellowship League which sided newly arrived migrants from the south. When she was just 14 years old she began teaching at a country school. Very gifted early on!