Do you know enough Black History?

Probably not.

Here we are. Another Black History Month. We normally hear about the usual folks, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And some people joke that, of course, Black folks get the shortest month of the year to celebrate and acknowledge, because we always get the short end of the stick.

I wanted this year to be different. Even start a trend of talking about the mostly unknown stories of Black people in America. Some of these stories are known by a few, but definitely not by the general populous and I would like to change that. Especially now that we are in a time where some government officials are trying to erase the stories we already know and I’m glad scholars are speaking out about this.

Here is a post from African American Studies Faculty in Higher Ed that was published on Medium yesterday.

Open Letter In Defense of AP African American Studies

The people I would like to explore are the Black elected officials in the Reconstruction Era. Many people have seen this picture of some of the congressmen.

But what about the other lawmakers? The sheriffs, treasurers, lawyers, judges. There were hundreds of lawmakers during the Reconstruction period. And many of their stories are pretty fascinating. Not only because many were former slaves, but they stepped into a world where White men ruled, and many fought and feared for their lives on a daily basis.

The election of these men brought a reign of terror upon them, and it would be a shame to not take time to acknowledge, visit, and hopefully understand their journey. Their determination, their resilience, and the fight they had for a better future for themselves and their families.

How did I come about wanting to tell these stories?

When President Barack Obama was running for President, I saw a documentary that showed a picture similar to the one above and I wanted to know who were these men? I had never heard of them.

I started doing my research and one thing that kept striking me was how parallel the white supremacists uproar against Obama compared to what these men went through when running for office and getting into office. Mind you there weren’t mass killings like in the past, but the anger and resentment was palpable.

The White League/White Lines and the KKK were born out of the Reconstruction elections to suppress, frighten, kill, Black people so they would stay out of government offices. They wanted to keep the negro in place and not dare tell White people what to do.

So, as I continued my research, there were stories after stories that kept popping off the pages to me as I read. I said I need to write a book. Actually, I need to write a series of books, but where to begin?

I decided at the time to start with my family. They are from rural Mississippi and as I researched around about the Black lawmakers there, I came across the story of the Vicksburg Massacre and the central figure was the Black Sheriff Peter Crosby.

In short, Sheriff Crosby was a man just trying to do his job, but most of the White townsmen would not let him. In fact, they begin to accuse him and two other Black elected officials of crimes, which led an angry mob of approximately 600 people to the Sheriff’s office, demanding his resignation. Well, quite a number of incidents happened which led to what “they” called a race riot. These days we really call them what they were… massacres.

I won’t go into much more detail here because yes, I want you to read the book but this is just one story out of hundreds that happened during the years of Reconstruction.

I look forward to sharing more with you not only throughout Black History Month but here as an ongoing History’s Untold Stories series.