Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the liberation of those who had been held as slaves in the United States. Originally a Texas state holiday, it is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States.









Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the liberation of those who had been held as slaves in the United States. Originally a Texas state holiday, it is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States.
The Dialectical Fluidity of Race —
Between self-definition and other-definition, between an individual’s chosen racial identity versus society’s imposed racial identity — facilitates an understanding of race as a social construction
Ben Carson – Slaves and the Carnival Cruise Ship Filled with Hot Dying Men/Women and Children with Dreams and Aspiration of a Better Africa
WASHINGTON ― Ben Carson made his debut as secretary of Housing and Urban Development Monday by telling agency employees about the virtues of the “can-do” American society. Carson said this value system was best exemplified by slaves, whom he characterized as immigrants who came to the United States with very little and worked very hard.
“That’s what America is about,” Carson said. “A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
By 1830 slavery was primarily located in the South, where it existed in many different forms. African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, inside homes, out in the fields, and in industry and transportation.
Though slavery had such a wide variety of faces, the underlying concepts were always the same. Slaves were considered property, and they were property because they were black. Their status as property was enforced by violence — actual or threatened. People, black and white, lived together within these parameters, and their lives together took many forms.
Enslaved African Americans could never forget their status as property, no matter how well their owners treated them. But it would be too simplistic to say that all masters and slaves hated each other. Human beings who live and work together are bound to form relationships of some kind, and some masters and slaves genuinely cared for each other. But the caring was tempered and limited by the power imbalance under which it grew. Within the narrow confines of slavery, human relationships ran the gamut from compassionate to contemptuous. But the masters and slaves never approached equality.
Black Group Identity
Work on Black group identity is not easy to characterize, in part because of relatively limited research on this issue, especially that which examines ethnic group differences (Porter and Washington, 1993). Typically, analysis highlights the influence of social class on identity (e.g., Landry, 1987; Farley, 1984). Some inquiry suggests that class is only a part of the puzzle. Broman et al. (1988) reveal that older, less-educated respondents in urban areas and highly-educated Blacks living outside the West were most likely to feel close to other Blacks. Gurin et al. (1989) show that identity, defined as common fate and as more Black than American, was not simply related to class. Males and those of upperclass status were more likely to feel a common fate with Blacks. Younger Blacks and those who did not work full-time were also more likely to feel more Black than American. Williams, T. K., & Thornton, M. C. (1998).
Introduction to the Subfield
The sociology of race and ethnicity began to take shape in the late 19th century. The American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, who was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, is credited with pioneering the subfield within the United States with his famous and still widely taught books The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction.
However, the subfield today differs greatly from its early stages. When early American sociologists focused on race and ethnicity, du Bois excepted, they tended to focus on the concepts of integration, acculturation, and assimilation, in keeping with the view of the U.S. as a “melting pot” into which difference should be absorbed. Concerns during the early 20th century were for teaching those who differed visually, culturally, or linguistically from the white Ango-Saxon norms how to think, speak, and act in accordance with them. This approach to studying race and ethnicity framed those who were not white Anglo-Saxon as problems that needed to be solved and was directed primarily by sociologists who were white men from middle to upper-class families.
As more people of color and women became social scientists throughout the twentieth century, they created and developed theoretical perspectives that differed from the normative approach in sociology, and crafted research from different standpoints that shifted the analytic focus from particular populations to social relations and the social system.
Note: Ben Carson you should take another look…
Source: Huffington Post
Source: The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, George P. Rawick, General Editor, with A Comprehensive Name Index for The American Slave, compiled by Howard E. Potts and Subject Index, from Index to The American Slave, edited by Donald M. Jacobs, assisted by Steven Fershleiser.
Source: PBS
Source: Williams, T. K., & Thornton, M. C. (1998). Social construction of ethnicity versus personal experience: The case of afro-amerasians. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 29(2), 255-267. Retrieved from http://nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/232586794?accountid=13217
On this day in 1770, America’s first-known “watch-night” service was held at St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia.
The Black Community
On This date in 1862 the first Watch Night Services were celebrated in Back communities in America.
The Watch Night service can be traced back to gatherings also known as “Freedom’s Eve.” On that night, Black slaves and free blacks came together in churches and private homes all across the nation awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law. At the stroke of midnight, it was January 1, 1863; all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. When the news was received, there were prayers, shouts and songs of joy as many people fell to their knees and thanked God.
Huffington Post
“Watch Night Service” in the Black Church in America symbolizes the historical fact, that on the night of Dec. 31, 1862 during the Civil War, free and freed blacks living in the Union States gathered at churches and/or other safe spaces, while thousands of their enslaved black sisters and brothers stood, knelt and prayed on plantations and other slave holding sites in America — waiting for President Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation into law. The Emancipation Proclamation legally recognized that the Civil War was fought for slavery.
Methodist
There’s another explanation of the Watch Night Service. It is said that the slaves in the Old Suth would gather in desperation on the last night of the year to await news regarding which of them would be sold on New Year’s Day to satisfy their masters’ outstanding debts. Which is unlikely considering they would have no reason to wait for January 1st to sell slaves to pay off creditors.
The practice may have begun with the Moravians, a small Christian denomination in Europe held in 1733 on the estate of a German count.
On this day in 1770, America’s first-known “watch-night” service was held at St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia.
Watch Night services are a tradition started by John Wesley, the founder of the United Methodist Church. In all honesty, he borrowed the tradition from Moravian Christians that used them as a late-night vigil for the faithful; however, as time marched on, John molded this into a New Year’s Eve service where Christians were invited to review the year, confess to sins and pray for the year ahead. These services remain in Methodist worship manuals as “Covenant Renewal Services.
What are you watching for on this 2016 – 2017 Watchnight?
Source:
http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/first-watch-night-service-occurs
From Christmas to Twelfth Night in Southern Illinois by John J. Dunphy
I want something a little more than the same ol’ Bus Story, the Underground Train, The Book Writer, and the Little Rock Story… you know the “Safe” Black Women
Nicole Avant served a two-year term as U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas from 2009 to 2011. President Barack Obama nominated her for the position in 2009 and after U.S. Senate confirmation, Hilary Clinton, then Secretary of State, swore her into office on September 9, 2009. Avant arrived in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, and presented her credentials on October 22, 2009.
Avant, born on March 6, 1968, is the daughter of Clarence Avant and Jacqueline Avant, both veterans of the music recording industry. She graduated from California State University Northridge with a B.A. in communications in 1984. Soon afterwards she joined A&M Records in Los Angeles and worked in its promotions division until 1998 when she was named Vice President of Interior Music Publishing. Avant was also an actress who had appeared in television shows such as JAG, Moesha and the Bernie Mac Show.
As I began to think about Black History for 2017 I started my search in usual fashion – entering “Black History” into the search box and clicking and pointing and deleting those unnecessary automatic downloads. It occurred to me as it has a hundred times before, I want something a little more than the same ol’ Bus Story, the Underground Train, The Book Writer, and the Little Rock Story… you know the “Safe” Black Women that educators in elementary and unfortunately secondary school don’t mind the over abundance of retelling those great stories about some incredible Black Women.
This time around I’m hungry for something more, something a lot more shocking and mind opening to idea of really gauging how far we have not come in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
Ride with me on my quest to find those little unknown stories about Black African-American Women and the stories they died to tell…
During the 1820’s Susan Jackson of Savannah, Georgia, ran a popular pastry shop in Reynolds Ward, the leading business section of the city, and during the next decade Eliza Seymour Lee owned a popular hotel in Charleston, South Carolina.
Source: Made available courtesy of The Journal of Women’s Studies , Inc.:
Did You Know
March 3, 1820 – Missouri Compromise was accepted by Congress. Missouri is admitted as a slave state in exchange for Maine’s admittance as a free state on condition that slavery be abolished in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase.
Stay Tuned…