One Mic Black History

13/01/2026

The most dangerous thing on the train wasn’t a weapon. It was a newspaper.

We are often taught that Pullman Porters were just "service workers"—men who carried bags, shined shoes, and smiled for tips.

But secretly? They were the most effective spy network in American history.

In the early 1900s, white Southern sheriffs banned the Chicago Defender because it encouraged Black families to leave the South. In some towns, just possessing a copy could get you arrested or lynched. They tried to build an "Iron Curtain" to keep Black folks uninformed and afraid.

So the Porters hacked the system.

They realized that white police ignored them because they saw them as "invisible servants." The Porters used that invisibility to smuggle thousands of copies of the paper into the Deep South, hiding bundles in their uniforms and luggage.

They dropped the papers off at secret locations along the rail lines while the trains were moving, spreading news about jobs, safety, and the Great Migration right under the nose of the K*K.

They didn't just carry luggage. They carried a blueprint

08/01/2026

Happy Birthday, Zora Neale Hurston.

In the 1930s, the Black male literary elite demanded “protest novels” books meant to argue for Black humanity in the face of Jim Crow.

Zora refused. She famously said, “I am not tragically colored.”

She didn’t feel the need to prove her humanity to anyone.

Instead, she traveled through the Deep South with a pistol on the seat beside her, recording folklore, Hoodoo practices, and the songs of rural Black communities.

She treated Black vernacular as rich and complex not “broken” English, but a language worthy of preservation.

Her refusal to conform came at a cost. She died penniless, and her books slipped out of circulation.

In 1973, Alice Walker had to pose as her niece just to locate her grave, overgrown and forgotten.

Zora Neale Hurston pioneered the idea that Black joy, Black language, and Black folklore did not need to be cleaned up for the white gaze.

06/01/2026

Mamie Till-Mobley died today in 2003 without ever seeing justice for Emmett.

The system did exactly what it was designed to do: It killed her child. Protected his killers. Expected silence.

But Mamie refused the script.

She opened the casket. She invited Jet. She forced the world to stare at the brutality until they couldn't look away.

“I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.”

She didn't get the conviction, but she sparked the movement. Justice isn't always a gavel. Sometimes, it’s the truth.

Rest in Power.

05/01/2026

New Episode! "The Town Where White People Were Illegal"

In 1904 Mississippi, a white man stepped off a train and made a dangerous mistake: he thought the law was on his side. He didn't realize he had just walked into Mound Bayou, the only town in the South where Jim Crow had no ju...

The Town Where White People Were Illegal page for One Mic: Black History

03/01/2026

We are discussing "Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power."
Most people know the story of non-violent resistance, but that isn't the whole picture. Robert F. Williams challenged the K*K, debated the NAACP, was hunted by the FBI and exiled in Cuba.

01/01/2026

For many Americans the New Year as a fresh start.

Before the Civil War, for enslaved people, it was often the worst day of the year.

January 1 was known as “Hiring Day” or “Heartbreak Day.” Enslaved men, women, and children waited in fear to learn whether they would be rented out for the year separating families without warning.

Formerly enslaved people remembered the terror vividly. In 1842, Lewis Clarke wrote:

“Of all days in the year, the slaves dread New Year’s Day the worst of any.”

30/12/2025

The “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns exploded in the 1930s, during the Great Depression.

White-owned stores made fortunes in Black neighborhoods while refusing to hire Black people beyond janitorial labor.

The message was simple: no jobs, no money.

Boycotts were timed around Christmas and peak shopping seasons to hit profits when it hurt the most

In Harlem, Rev. John H. Johnson’s Citizens League for Fair Play shut down Blumstein’s Department Store until it hired Black clerks and managers, one of the earliest affirmative hiring agreements in U.S. history.

By the 1960s, Operation Breadbasket scaled the strategy nationwide, turning boycotts into millions of dollars in new jobs and income.

This wasn’t symbolism, it was Black communities weaponizing their buying power and forcing business to negotiate.

27/12/2025

The FBI watched Jackie Ormes for nearly a decade.

From 1948 to 1958, federal agents surveilled comic artist Jackie Ormes not for crimes, but for her politics.

Her “offenses” included NAACP membership, public support for Paul Robeson, and being a Black woman who refused to behave.

Her FBI file swelled to 287 pages. Agents couldn’t even agree on who she was, whether she was “well-read and intelligent” or “flighty.”

But she was dangerous enough for the government to watch.

27/12/2025

Since Christmas is over, let’s talk about Black folks who didn’t celebrate it.

Frederick Douglass hated Christmas.

In some of his writings and speeches, Douglass explained that slaveholders used Christmas as psychological control, a brief release valve.

Enslaved people were given food, drink, and “rest” not out of kindness, but to drain resistance and prevent rebellion the rest of the year.

Christmas wasn’t mercy. It was management.

Malcolm X rejected Christmas too

Malcolm called it cultural conditioning. He argued Christmas had nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with forcing Black people to embrace white imagery, white traditions, and consumer habits.

A white Santa. A white Jesus. A holiday that trained Black people to celebrate values that weren’t theirs.

25/12/2025

Before Barbie, there was Patty-Jo.

In 1947, legendary cartoonist Jackie Ormes created the Patty-Jo doll, the first nationally marketed Black doll modeled after a Black comic character.

Patty-Jo came straight from Ormes’s comic strip Patty-Jo and Ginger. Patty-Jo was the sharp-tongued Black child who said what adults wouldn’t.

This wasn’t a toy about fantasy. It was about representation and changed how little black kids saw themselves in a segregated America filled with racist dolls

22/12/2025

Happy birthday, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Before galleries and auction houses, he was SAMO© the mysterious graffiti artist tagging downtown Manhattan with cryptic lines.

SAMO started as a private joke between friends, short for “Same Old Sh*t,” a phrase they used while smoking and talking about art, life, and capitalism. Adding the copyright symbol was the end was a comment on consumer culture.

Before Basquiat became a brand, he was already mocking the idea of one.

19/12/2025

Happy birthday, Carter G. Woodson.

Born in 1875, Woodson was one of the first professionally trained Black historians and the architect of Black History Month, originally launched in 1926 as Negro History Week.