:: my thoughtz ::

:: 2.20.2003 ::

Douglass
Frederick Douglass (1817 - 1895)


Abolitionist, writer, and orator. Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1818, he was the son of a slave woman and, probably, her white master. Upon his escape from slavery at age 20, he adopted the name of the hero of Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake. Douglass immortalized his years as a slave in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). This and two subsequent autobiographies, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), mark his greatest contributions to American culture. Written as antislavery propaganda and personal revelation, they are regarded as the finest examples of the slave narrative tradition and as classics of American autobiography.

Douglass's life as a reformer ranged from his abolitionist activities in the early 1840s to his attacks on Jim Crow and lynching in the 1890s. For 16 years he edited an influential black newspaper and achieved international fame as an orator and writer of great persuasive power. In thousands of speeches and editorials he levied an irresistible indictment against slavery and racism, provided an indomitable voice of hope for his people, embraced antislavery politics, and preached his own brand of American ideals. In the 1850s he broke with the strictly moralist brand of abolitionism led by William Lloyd Garrison; he supported the early women's rights movement; and he gave direct assistance to John Brown's conspiracy that led to the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

Rhetorically, Douglass was a master of irony, as illustrated by his famous Fourth of July speech in 1852: "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn," he declared. Then he accused his unsuspecting audience in Rochester, New York, of mockery for inviting him to speak and quoted Psalm 137, where the children of Israel are forced to sit down "by the rivers of Babylon," there to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land." For the ways that race have caused the deepest contradictions in American history, few better sources of insight exist than Douglass's speeches. Moreover, for understanding prejudice, there are few better starting points than his timeless definition of racism as a "diseased imagination."

Douglass welcomed the Civil War in 1861 as a moral crusade against slavery. During the war he labored as a propagandist of the Union cause and emancipation, a recruiter of black troops, and, on two occasions, an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln. He viewed the Union victory as an apocalyptic rebirth of America as a nation rooted in a rewritten Constitution and the ideal of racial equality. Some of his hopes were dashed during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, but he continued to travel widely and lecture on racial issues, national politics, and women's rights. In the 1870s Douglass moved to Washington, D.C., where he edited a newspaper and became president of the ill-fated Freedman's Bank. As a stalwart Republican, Douglass was appointed marshal (1877-1881) and recorder of deeds (1881-1886) for the District of Columbia, and charg&233; d'affaires for Santo Domingo and minister to Haiti (1889-1891).

Brilliant, heroic, and complex, Douglass became a symbol of his age and a unique voice for humanism and social justice. His life and thought will always speak profoundly to the meaning of being black in America, as well as the human calling to resist oppression. Douglass died in 1895 after years of trying to preserve a black abolitionist's meaning and memory of the great events he had witnessed and helped to shape.




:: 11:57:00 PM [+] ::
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February 20, 2003
Not too bad at all...


Yo!!!

Whatz up ya'll? Nothing much to say...uhm...I had a bad stomach ache this morning, so I missed my 12pm class, but I was feelin better in time to go to lab at 3...I did the best I could mom...geez!!! Uhm...after class, I went over to CAU to visit my new friend Lesli...and oh my Jesus! Her hair was a hot mess...*smile*...Nah, she had just washed it and it was in a blowed out fro at the time...she looked like a female me...well...almost...she aint THAT cute...but she'z aiight...*smile*. Anyway, I chilled over there for a little bit..I met Tiffany..a.k.a. "The Mean One"...a.k.a. "Taz"...a.k.a. "Oh my God...what the **** happened in her room!"...a.k.a....ok, ok..you get the message...She waz kool though...a tad cluttered...but she means well...*smile* She playz softball for CAU, which iz kool...shortstop/catcher...I used to play shortstop, 2nd base and outfield (mostly center) when I was in high school...but nah, I don't think she's reached my level yet...Anyway, after leavin' there, I went back to Tech...I told L that I'd go to this Diversity Week thing that the CA's were having...It was called Jeopardy Jambalaya or something...it was fun...we didnt win...but we got free food...and everyone knows that free is alwayz better than paying...especially when you have only $20 to your name like me...and when gas is $1000 a gallon...After that, I came home and now I'm in the process of posting the Black Leader of the day...enjoy!


:: 11:56:00 PM [+] ::
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Coleman
Bessie Coleman (1892 - 1926)


Bessie Coleman was the first African American to earn an international pilot's license and the first black woman to fly an airplane. She was born on January 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas, a little town of 1,000 people less than ten miles west of where the borders of Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana meet. She was clever, intelligent, beautiful and displayed a sense of self-confidence that would be needed for the life she was destined to live. As a child she had always wanted to "amount to something" and at the age of 23 she left for Chicago to fulfill that dream.

Bessie lived with her older brother and thrived in Chicago. She worked as a manicurist in an eight block section called "The Stroll," a Harlem of the Midwest. Bessie knew every inch of this territory and explored it all. She went to the dozens of nightclubs along the Stroll and saw the great black performers of the day, including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Ethel Waters. This independent, strong-willed woman finally found her calling one day in the fall of 1919. Her somewhat inebriated brother began a teasing discourse about the superiority of French women. He told her that they had careers and even flew airplanes. Bessie decided then and there that she too would fly.

Unfortunately, Coleman couldn't find a white pilot willing to teach her to fly and there were no black instructors at the time. She would have to travel to France. On June 15, 1921, after seven months of instruction, Coleman received her license from the renowned Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI). She returned to the United States, a celebrity. Bessie's pride in her race was deep and genuine. She refused to "pass as white," refused to perform any place where African Americans were not admitted, and even walked out on a movie deal when she discovered that her role would be demeaning to African Americans. She wanted to start a flying school for African Americans and spent the rest of her life pursuing this goal.

For the next five years, Coleman performed at air shows and encouraged African Americans to fly. Queen Bess (as she was known) said, "The air is the only place to be free from prejudices." On April 30, 1926, Coleman was preparing for an air show in Jacksonville, FL. William Wills, a young mechanic, was at the controls. A wrench slid into the control gears and jammed them. The aircraft went into a tailspin, then flipped upside-down. Coleman was pitched out of the plane and fell to her death. Wills, unable to regain control, died when the plane crashed a few seconds later.

An estimated 10,000 people filed past Coleman's coffin when she was brought home to Chicago. Fifteen hundred mourners filled the church and over 3,500 people stood outside. The little girl from Texas, determined to "amount to something," had succeeded. In 1934 Lt. William Powell wrote, "Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was much worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream."



:: 12:34:00 AM [+] ::
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Normal Day
Nothin' Special...


Yo,

Nothin' really big happened today...we had a presentation in Senior Design but I didn't have to present...I got an 84 on my Biology test that I was talkin' about earlier...*smile*...the class average was a 79...so I aint trippin'...I could have sworn that I failed! Uhm...thatz it for now...today is C...and you KNOW I'm reppin da last name...enjoy!


:: 12:18:00 AM [+] ::
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Baker
Josephine Baker (1906 - 1975)


Performer and civil rights activist. Born and raised in poverty in the black ghetto of St. Louis, Missouri, Baker left home at 13 to tour on the southern vaudeville circuit. By 15 she had joined the company of Shuffle Along, a musical comedy by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, which was the most successful black theatrical enterprise of the 1920s. She played the comic chorus girl, the one at the end of the line too dumb to remember the words and too uncoordinated to keep up with the others, with great skill. When Shuffle Along closed, Baker appeared in Sissle and Blake's next Broadway production, Chocolate Dandies. She was noted in New York as a comedienne, often wearing blackface makeup in the minstrel show tradition.

This seemed likely to be her destiny, but in 1925, she joined the cast of La revue nègre in Paris. Baker danced bare-breasted and became an immediate star. Next, at the Folies Bergère, she danced the Charleston and the shimmy in skimpy outfits, including a skirt of bananas that became her signature costume. Repeatedly cast as the local girl with whom the French colonist falls in love, she seemed the perfect object for colonialist fantasies, sexy yet good-natured. Although she was introducing American jazz dancing to Europe, many saw her not as an American but as a representative of French colonial Africa--so much so that she was made queen of France's Colonial Exposition of 1931 until it was pointed out to the organizers that America was not a French colony.

Gradually, Baker transformed herself into a glamorous European star. Her act, comparable to that of other French music hall performers, did not present her as stereotypically black. But when she tried to project this persona in New York's Ziegfeld Follies in 1935, she was a flop--America was not ready for a glamorous black star. She returned to France and became a citizen when she married a Frenchman in 1937.

During World War II, Baker worked for Charles de Gaulle's Free French, providing cover for a military intelligence officer and later serving as a spokesperson for the cause in North Africa. For her work, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Medal of the Resistance.

In her later years, she developed into a masterful nightclub performer, singing as well as dancing. Increasingly, she used her celebrity as a platform for civil rights activities in the United States. On a 1951 American tour she insisted on a nondiscrimination clause in her contracts, effectively integrating nightclubs across the country. Through a much-publicized incident at New York's Stork Club, she focused attention on discrimination against blacks in restaurants and nightclubs. And by taking up the cause of Willie McGee, a black man sentenced to death for raping a white woman, she helped increase the public's awareness of race-based inequalities of punishment.

Baker adopted 12 children of different races and nationalities, seeking thereby to demonstrate the possibility of interracial harmony. She made the children the centerpiece of a large entertainment complex built around her country home in the Dordogne, though in the process, she went bankrupt.

Baker was the first black woman to achieve international stardom. Her success in Europe was a source of joy and inspiration to many African Americans, and her example encouraged some to look to France for life beyond the color bar. When Baker, who continued to perform all her life, died at age 69, she was given a state funeral as a war hero.



:: 1:09:00 AM [+] ::
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Home Sweet Home
Gotta Love Ya Family...


Whatz up?

Uhm...nothin' really big happened today...I might be getting a job..which iz alwayz good...because i'm joke! No, not broke...JOKE!!! Believe me...itz far worse than bein' broke...Anyway, I went and saw my grandparents and my mommy today...(yeah I say mommy...you got beef???) My grandfather came here from Jamaica last month because his knee had been paining him...the doctors say that there is some crap in there from his knee that is scraping together everytime he moves the joint...it seemed to get better but then he went to the doctor yesterday and they suggested surgery...He will either get the stuff removed...and hopefully that will work...its either that or knee replacement surgery...Anyway, I ask that those of you that believe in someone other than yourself pray for my grandfather...might as well call him my dad...he's the closest thing I've got to a father...ok? Thankyou...Uhm...thatz about it...oh...my mommy and grandma gave me money...*smile* Gotta love it!!! *muah*

Lataz


:: 12:54:00 AM [+] ::
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ABC'z of Black History
Black History Month...


February iz Black History Month...as everyone knowz...but itz also the shortest month of the year...go figure...so...in recognition of Black History Month...and for those of you that want to learn about Influential African American men and women that preceded us, I'm going to start what I'm calling the ABCz of Black History...each time that I post something about my day, I will post a picture, name and brief summarization of the person being honored...starting with the letter A...and 26 posts from now...ending with the letter Z...(prolly Shaka Zulu..*smile*) I would have started earlier but I just now thought of it...so when itz March and April...and I'm still posting stuff about Black History...and you ask me, "You're still posting stuff about Black History Month???"...and I sharply reply..."Are you still black???"...don't be offended, ok? Good...

Shall we begin?



:: 2:44:00 PM [+] ::
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Ali
Muhammad Ali (1942 - present)


Boxer, born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky. From 1956-60, Clay fought as an amateur (winning 100 of 108 matches) before becoming the light-heavyweight gold medalist in the 1960 Olympics. Financed by a group of Louisville businessmen, he turned professional and by 1963 had won his first 19 fights. In 1964 he won the world heavyweight championship with a stunning defeat of Sonny Liston. Immediately afterwards, Clay announced that he was a Black Muslim and had changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

In 1967, after defending the championship nine times within two years, Ali was stripped of his title for refusing induction into the U.S. Army based on religious grounds. His action earned him both respect and anger from different quarters, but he did not box for three and one-half years until, in 1971, he lost to Joe Frazier. A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed his right to object to military service on religious grounds and Ali regained the title in 1974 by knocking out George Foreman in Zaire, Africa. Ali defended his title 10 times before losing to Leon Spinks in 1978. When he defeated Spinks later that same year, he became the first boxer ever to regain the championship twice.

Famous for his flamboyant manner, his boasting predictions of which round he'd defeat his opponent, and his doggerel verse ("float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"), he was also recognized as one of the all-time great boxers with his quick jab and footwork. He compiled a career record of 56 wins, 5 losses, and 37 knockouts, before retiring in 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s he was arguably the best-known individual in the entire world due not only to his controversial career but also to his travels and deliberate reaching out to the Third World.

In the 1980s it was revealed that Ali was suffering from a form of Parkinson's disease. He made occasional appearances to the acclaim of an admiring public, including the lighting of the flaming cauldron to signal the beginning of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.



:: 2:42:00 PM [+] ::
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Awwww
A Valentine After All...


I've only been awake for an hour, so I don't have much to write about yet, but I just wanted to Thank Sherin for the sweetest Valentine card I could have ever gotten...I really, really, really appreciate it...It was better than anything you could have given me...Thankz so much...*muah*

Lataz


:: 2:27:00 PM [+] ::
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Sunday
5:30 a.m.


Wat a gwan?

I aint written since All-star weekend...but its hella late and I really don't have much to say...uhm...all my friendz that were here from outta state are like in love with Atlanta and can' wait to come back...they think itz gonna be tight like it was all the time...SORRY!!! Try again next big event...

I had a test in BIO at G-state Thursday and a Physics test at GT Friday...and I am proud to say that I studied German for the Bio test and it was written in French...and Japanese for the Physics test which MUST have been written in Greek...shyt...It must be some language that was originated on Mars...because I was lost! Oh well...I'll see how I did on Tuesday...

Yo, there are soooooo many gyrlz at G-state...bein at Tech 5 yearz...i'm surely not used to going to class and seeing cute BLACK women in my class...itz really hard to maintain focus...but I manage (not evident in my test score...but hey...can't win em all...) I was in the Student Center on Thurzday studying for my test and I mean...WOMEN EVA' BA' WHERE!!!...and the thing iz...they look stuck up...because they all have on their mall and club outfitz like this iz Club Panther...oh well...I aint hatin...I'ma wear my normal GT clothez...Im there to get a "C" and pass on by...whatever else...will follow...but in closing...DAMN...they got some fine women!!! *smile*

Uhmmm....nothin else really happened last week...I'm still tryin to get these rims...thatz about it...im goin shoppin tomorrow at Lenox...my friend iz gonna get me some clothes...we'll see about that tho'....uhm hmmm...

Oh yeah...for those you who are curiouz...I didn't do anything for Valentine'z Day...why? Cuz i didn't have a Valentine...but thatz ok...trust...

I just in from Buckhead...and I'm a little tired...i'ma call my friend Lez and go to bed...she betta be awake! Itz only 5:30....a.m....thatz not too too late...shyt...I'm up...*smile*...nite



:: 5:23:00 AM [+] ::
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