Parent Company: SC Black Media Group, Inc.
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Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has died at the age of 74 after a battle with cancer, her family announced.
The longtime congresswoman served in the House since 1995 and leaves a legacy of pushing for civil rights legislation, including as the lead sponsor of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act.
Read more here: nbcnews.app.link/gX6Q5rolnLb
Remembering Eddie Dunning: Gamecock field artist dies at 69
Two new books on Harriet Tubman, one on her larger network of Black liberation, and another on her religious philosophy of liberation: "the woman who sang “Go Down, Moses” along the rivers and roads of the Eastern Shore of Maryland as she helped some seventy people escape slavery via the Underground Railroad—went as far south as she could. Harriet Tubman returned not only to the border state from which she herself had escaped; defiantly courageous, she ventured deeper into the land of bo***ge to liberate hundreds of others during the Civil War.
"Her greatest feat may also be among her least known—a raid of Confederate rice plantations on the Combahee River, in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, which liberated more than seven hundred enslaved Americans. She did not lead the raid, as some recent histories suggest, but she was integral to its success. For more than a year, Tubman gathered intelligence from formerly enslaved men and women fleeing the Confederacy, and she recruited troops, scouts, and pilots from around Port Royal, South Carolina, to help the Union Army fight its way through enemy territory.
"On the night of June 1, 1863, five months after the Emancipation Proclamation and a few weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg, Tubman accompanied Colonel James Montgomery and the newly freed men of the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers as they boarded three steamboats off the coast of Beaufort. Their paddle wheels turned quietly in the dark as the vessels advanced toward St. Helena Sound. From the pilot house of the lead steamer, Tubman watched a full moon rise, its light a welcome guide for the raiders as they avoided pluff mud and mines, following a serpentine, twenty-five-mile route up the river. By the next morning, Montgomery’s men had landed and driven off the few remaining Confederate pickets, most enemy soldiers having fled the so-called sickly season, when malaria and yellow fever ravaged the coast. Thanks to Tubman’s intelligence, the Union troops faced almost no resistance besides a few skirmishes; after destroying a pontoon bridge they marched on seven plantations, burning whatever they could not confiscate. Millions of dollars in property was left smoldering as soldiers made away with rice, cotton, corn, chickens, pigs, and horses, but the soldiers were soon overwhelmed by a different kind of “contraband.”
"Tubman later remembered how enslaved people of all ages emerged like “startled deer” from the fields and the forests along the shoreline, running for the boats like “the children of Israel, coming out of Egypt.” It was as if a “mysterious telegraphic communication” had gone from one rice field to the next, with laborers sharing the news that “Lincoln’s gun-boats come to set them free,” she said. Hundreds of refugees began rushing the rowboats; once those were filled, the oarsmen, worried about capsizing and afraid of being stranded, began beating people back. Seeing the chaos, Montgomery called out to Tubman for help: “Moses, you’ll have to give ’em a song.”
Above the screaming, the splashing, and the gunfire, Tubman’s voice rang out. “Of all the whole creation in the east or in the west, / The glorious Yankee nation is the greatest and the best,” she sang. “Come along! Come along! Don’t be alarmed, / Uncle Sam is rich enough to give you all a farm.” After every verse of the abolitionist anthem, the clamoring crowds let go of the boats, raised their hands, and shouted, “Glory!” The rowboats returned to the steamers, and the three steamships returned to Beaufort, with more than seven hundred newly freed people.
"That dramatic scene, with all its danger, grace, and tragedy, is wonderfully staged in Edda L. Fields-Black’s new history, _Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War_ (Oxford). Where some have seen the raid primarily as Tubman’s story, isolating her from the broader network of Black liberation, Fields-Black powerfully situates the abolitionist among her contemporaries—controversial military geniuses who advanced the war effort through espionage, river raids, and guerrilla tactics, and fellow freedom seekers who, like Tubman, chose not to flee but to go back down to pharaoh’s land and fight."
Continued in Comments. Shown, "The Beacon of Hope," a new sculpture of Harriet Tubman, touring, here at John Brown Farm Historic Site. She holds the North Star in her hand, the guidepost that helped people escaping from bo***ge make their way north.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/01/combee-edda-l-fields-black-night-flyer-tiya-miles-book-review
Friday report: This week 82 more teachers signed up for people’s history lessons at ZEP from Phoenix, Ariz.; Oakland and Occidental, Calif.; Chicago, Ill.; Topsham, Maine; Hampstead, Md.; Starkville, Miss.; State College, Pa.; Providence, R. I.; Leming, Tex.; Seattle, Wash.; & many more cities.
See some reasons why in the graphic below. Register now if you haven’t already. https://www.zinnedproject.org/
In memory of the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, we honor her tireless dedication to advancing social justice causes like HR 40 reparations and advocating for just criminal justice reform. She was a stalwart leader in reintroducing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, standing up for accountability and equality in our communities.
National Action Network pay their respects to a true trailblazer. Congresswoman Jackson Lee’s relentless efforts to push forward HR 40 and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act have left an enduring impact on our pursuit of justice and equality.
Her unwavering commitment to serving the people and her commitment to reforming our criminal justice system have set an important precedent for future generations. Let us carry on her legacy by continuing the fight for reparations and equitable policing practices in her memory.
Rest in power, Congresswoman . Your courage, advocacy, and dedication will forever be remembered and cherished in the ongoing quest for a more just and unified society👑🕊️
Graphic:
In 1949, Allen University sponsored a performance by famed vocalist Marian Anderson at Columbia’s Township Auditorium ! Marian Anderson was an American contralto, singing music from opera to spirituals. In 1939, she performed at the White House and was scheduled to perform at Constitution Hall but was blocked by the Daughers of the American Revolution because of her race. So she sang to an integrated crowd of 75,000 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for Easter Sunday, broadcast nationwide. In 1955, she became the first African American to perform with the Metropolitan Opera in New York! Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The men, women and children who worked rice fields often did so by putting their lives in peril. Working in swamps, they were prone to malaria and other insect-related diseases, snake bites and fatal attacks by alligators. Jonathan Green is the founder of The Lowcountry Rice Culture Project. The Gullah artist has been tirelessly re-telling and re-imagining an inclusive story of South Carolina’s rice culture to help people understand the complexities of African American’s relationship to rice. Members of his family were independent rice farmers after emancipation. Read more: https://bit.ly/BSBRiceCulture [Art by Jonathan Green]
Team Black Expo!!! Ready for Columbia May 16-18!!!
“I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best — when I'm at my best — of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music, are in my poetry and prose, or I've missed everything." - Dr. Maya Angelou
April 4, 1928, Dr. Maya Angelou was born. Author of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1970), "Gather Together in My Name" (1974), "All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes" (1986), "A Song Flung Up to Heaven" (2002), and several other works spanning length and genre, Angelou, became one of the world’s most well-known poets.
Angelou’s cosmopolitan career spanned five decades and included professional dancing (she trained with Martha Graham and performed with Alvin Ailey), scriptwriting, and acting. Her autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” influenced the start of the Black Women’s Literary Renaissance. Angelou was honored with numerous awards including a Spingarn Medal (1994) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010).
A photograph of Dr. Angelou is on display in our “Spirit in the Dark" exhibition, which examines Black religious life through a selection of photographs from the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony, Jet, and Negro Digest. On view until January 2025.
Learn more: https://s.si.edu/43M4Xlv
📸 Maya Angelou working on her bed with a thesaurus, a dictionary, and The Holy Bible. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1982. Photograph by Moneta Sleet Jr. Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
**Date & Location Change**
Please join us on Wednesday, April 10 for the annual I. DeQuincey Newman Insititute for Peace and Social Justice Spring Lecture Series. At 5:30 pm we will welcome the Honorable Judge Clifton Newman to the Joseph F. Rice School of Law. The nephew of the I. DeQuincey Newman will speak on the intersection of social justice and the law. Register for this free event here: https://bit.ly/49uBxKJ
Author Percival Everett has challenged the schism of race in such satirical novels as "Erasure" (basis of the Oscar-winning film "American Fiction"). His latest, "James," re-tells the story of "Huckleberry Finn" from the point of view of Huck's enslaved friend, Jim, for whom language becomes a shiel...
In 1951, African American students and parents in Clarendon County, South Carolina, sued the school board over unequal schools. Harry and Eliza Briggs and other families—with the organizing of Rev. Joseph DeLaine—pressed their case against great opposition. Attorneys Harold Boulware of Columbia, Robert Carter, and Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP took their case, Briggs v. Elliott, to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was the first of five school desegregation cases that were argued before the U.S. Supreme Court as part of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued their ruling in those cases: Segregation is unconstitutional.
before Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, Sarah Mae Flemming, 20 years old, exited a bus rather than endure the driver’s humiliating treatment in June 1954? Flemming sued South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G), the bus operator, with attorney Phillip Wittenberg. In February 1955, Judge George Bell Timmerman dismissed the case on the basis that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional for school facilities and not buses. The US Fourth Circuit Court in June 1955 overruled Judge Timmerman’s ruling, declaring segregation on city buses unconstitutional. Sarah Mae Flemming’s case provided the legal roadmap to end the Montgomery bus boycott over a year later.
Join us next Tuesday, February 27, at 6 pm at All Good Books, located at 734 Harden Street, to hear Dr. Carolyn Pearson Jenkins discuss her new book, “Blazing Toward Freedom: Septima Poinsette Clark's Story from Slave to Queen Mother of the Movement.” A book signing and reception will follow. We hope to see you there!
Born in 1868, W.E.B. Du Bois was a historian, sociologist, novelist, and editor. Considered one of the premier African American intellectuals of the 20th century, Du Bois earned bachelor's degrees from both Fisk and Harvard University. He continued his education at Harvard, earning a master's degree and becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from the university.
While teaching at Atlanta University (Clark Atlanta University), Du Bois published "The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study," a work commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania. This became the first sociological case study of the Black community and propelled Du Bois’ writing career and public profile.
W.E.B. Du Bois also produced speculative fiction short stories that invoked sci-fi realities and Afrofuturist themes to further express this condition of the Black experience. In “The Comet” (1920), Du Bois created one of the first works of Afrofuturist literature, with his dystopic, science fiction narrative serving as an allegory for the destructive capabilities of racism.
Explore our new Searchable Museum story about W.E.B. Du Bois’ presentation on Black Life in 1900 to the 1900 Paris Exposition, a world fair featuring the innovations of the new century. Among the many presentations, “The Exhibit of American Negroes” stood out: https://bit.ly/4bJLq90
📸 Courtesy of Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
The Lowcountry Gullah Culture is a unique and vibrant culture that has been passed down through generations of African Americans living in the coastal regions
Deion Sanders is being honored by Sports Illustrated! The University of Colorado Boulder football program coach has completely overhauled the team for the better. He was tasked with transforming the football program and has done just that so far by garnering excitement surrounding the team again. Co...
Join us on upcoming tours! https://traveling.black/tours/
• Cuba (January 2024, Havana Jazz Fest)
• South Africa (February 2024)
• Ghana (June 2024, Akwasidae Festival)
• Colombia (August 2024, Petronio Festival)
• East Africa (October 2024, TBA)
Make sure to join the Traveling Black notification list to hear about new tours when they are announced: https://traveling.black/tours/tour-notification/
Traveling Black
Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated by police and FBI agents in Chicago, Illinois.
Dawn Staley and Niele Ivey were captured showing each other love in Paris on Monday ahead of the Gamecocks' season opener on Monday.
Howard University just became the first HBCU to create a skating team, with Maya James and Cheyenne Walker being co-founders of the figure skating club on campus.
Students piled in on Wednesday to continue with their third and final day of their master class with the actors.
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