Every Month Should be Black History Month

fuckyeahfeminists:

sourcedumal:

native-detroiter:

weian-fu:

cheapobsession:

weian-fu:

cheapobsession:

weian-fu:

cheapobsession:

native-detroiter:

callingoutbigotry:

grrrl-riot:

callingoutbigotry:

ljmaystrader:

callingoutbigotry:

trakehner:

my floor ✌

your floor is racist ✌

No, it isn’t, it is a flag. A flag is not racist. A person is rasict. A statement can be considered racist. Now if the flag were branded with racial slurs or other means of hatred, I could understand, however, it does not.

hoooooooooooboy i’m going to need you to unfollow me right now

the confederate flag is racist because it was the flag used by the confederate armies who were doing what? oh yeah fighting for their right to enslave, torture, and murder people based on their race!

i bet you’d agree that a flag with a swastika on it was racist. this is the same situation.

Okay, so this flag was the flag that represented the Confederate States of America- I believe they first started using it in 1863 or 1864- either way it was introduced during the Civil War. So it doesn’t quite represent Southern “states”- it represented the states that succeeded from the United States. So technically it’s not a symbol of the Southern states, it’s a symbol of succession and the nation they claimed to have formed. A lot of people used it as an alternate to the the American flag. 

BUT- and here’s why in my opinion this flag has become a symbol of hate- it didn’t gain popularity or much recognition until the mid 20th century particularly during WWII and in the time following it. During the Civil Right’s movement, Southern’s who were opposed to desegregation began displaying it to represent their opposition to federal laws (ie their resistance to the North). And then of course the KKK and other hate groups have embraced the flag as well (for the very reason listed above). 

factual burn!

if it was all about southern pride, black southerners would have this flag. and funny how no one ever flies the first flag. hmm.

There were southern blacks that willing fought for this flag, and there’s pictures to prove it.

Being forced to fight doesn’t count.

What sense does it make to give a man a gun that doesn’t want to fight? He could just shot you and leave. A lot that fought, fought willingly.

Still waiting on that proof, sis. And even If i did believe that there were Black folk fighting by choice to stay slaves, I highly doubt that white folks were delusional or comfortable enough to arm them. Also even if you could back this bullshit up, comparing the amount of Black people fighting against these confederate assholes to the amount who (allegedly) chose to fight for the confederacy would blow your argument away.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=black+confederate+soldiers

Real cute, but in trying so hard to be a smart-ass you negated your own point.

From Mariners’ Museum:

Now, before you get excited, keep in mind that Stauffer points out that many of these black soldiers were not accepted by the Confederate government and were not issued firearms: still more of these soldiers were coerced into joining the military, and others joined to escape miserable poverty. Professor Carol Sheriff of the College of William and Mary reinforces the notion that any blacks who fought did so somewhat involuntarily, by clarifying that some black body-servants may have taken up arms in the heat of battle to defend their masters and themselves, and even then they were sometimes forced to do so. (Article HERE.) She also makes the point that arming blacks or allowing them to fight in the military was illegal in the Confederacy. This makes it extremely difficult to claim that the Confederates used black troops, because refusing to allow them to fight and forcing them to join in the first place quashes the notion that they were soldiers. In any case, they were present in such minuscule numbers that it’s difficult to validate their presence – these “soldiers” only represented about one half of one percent of the Confederate military strength.

And it gets better!

The greatest single example of black Confederate soldiers – the Louisiana Native Guards, composed of black and mixed-race men from the New Orleans area – was not accepted by the Confederate military despite their wish to fight for the south when the war broke out (Article HERE.) As a result, when the Union took New Orleans in spring of 1862, the Louisiana Native Guards joined the Union when General Butler called for reinforcements. On a side note, over 4,000 black and mixed-race men joined the Union army in New Orleans that spring, which outnumbers those that may have joined the Confederacy over the course of the entire war.

A sample of “ranks” held by Black soldiers from blackconfederatesoldiers.com

And finally, an article from Harvard professor John Stauffer giving details on why you, & all other neo-confederates are completely full of shit.

It is well known that in Louisiana and Tennessee, Stauffer added, Confederate units were organized by elite, light-skinned freedmen who identified with the slave-owning white plantation culture. (The Tennessee troops were never issued arms, though, and the black unit known as the Louisiana Native Guards never saw action — and quickly switched sides as soon as Union forces appeared.)

But unless readers think that black Confederates were truly enamored of the South’s cause, Stauffer related the case of John Parker, a slave forced to build Confederate barricades and later to join the crew of a cannon firing grapeshot at Union troops at the First Battle of Bull Run. All the while, recalled Parker, he worried about dying, prayed for a Union victory, and dreamed of escaping to the other side.

“His case can be seen as representative,” said Stauffer. “Masters put guns to (the heads of slaves) to make them shoot Yankees.”

I hope you learned a lesson in all this. That lesson is to shut the fuck up when grown folks is talking & maybe try to learn something yourself. The confederate flag is indisputably racist, & denying its history isn’t going to make that fact go away.

that was a motherfucking read

WELP!

And let’s not forget the Confederate Constitution, which specifically states that Black people are to be slaves and that the government wouldn’t be able to pass any law that prohibited slavery upon Black people.

So please tell me again how the Confederate Flag isn’t a symbol of racism and anti-Blackness?

A beautiful history lesson. Waving that flag is such a passive aggressive way to show how racist you are. Then they like to pretend that it’s “harmless,” which is offensive in and of itself because if millions of people feel threatened by it…it’s not fucking harmless.

thingsivemade:

Rochelle Ballantyne, 17, of Brooklyn is taking the chess world by storm. She is on the verge of becoming the first African-American female chess master…

Clutch Magazine, via Jezebel

disciplesofmalcolm:

norulenorule:

Assata Shakur from Honey Magazine debut issue, 1998. Full article forthcoming.

“In some ways it was easier for my generation. Racism was blatant and obvious. The “Whites Only” signs let us know clearly, what we were up against. Not much has changed, but the system of lies and tricknology is much more sophisticated. Today young people have to be highly informed and acutely analytical, or they will be swept up into a whirlpool of lies and deception.”

-Assata Shakur

poc-creators:

libraryjournal:

bcaheritage:

ORAL HISTORY VOLUNTEERS WANTED!!

Are you interested in Black history or photography?

We are looking for dedicated volunteers who can assist in collecting stories and memories for Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950-1990s an exciting photography project delivered in partnership with the V&A. 

Staying Power has collected over 100 photographs that span fifty years that will be added to the national photography collection at the V&A. 

The next phase of the project is to collect oral history interviews with the photographers and subjects of the photographers as well as people who remember the events and places that the photographs depict. 

The oral history interviews will become part of the permanent collection at Black Cultural Archives and will be featured in a major exhibition at the new Black Heritage Centre in Brixton in 2014.

Black Cultural Archives (BCA) was founded in 1981 to record and preserve the history of people of African descent in Britain.

BOOST