History's Unseen Truths
Bridging Past and Present
Happy Black History Month!
Yes, it is still Black History Month, though the Trump/Elon administration wants to erase and roll this back just like many other vital and important things like government agencies, civil rights, DEI. This administration not so subtly blame Black people for DEI and framing us as unqualified. Truth of the matter, according to the quote below from CNN, White women are the biggest beneficiaries.
DEI helps many groups. Not just the Blacks. (Trump’s voice)
I won’t go over the numerous things this administration is doing to create shock and awe. I’m sure by now you’ve had many moments of despair, anger and rage.
I will say one highlight of this month was this year’s Super Bowl.
From Jon Batiste singing the National Anthem…
to Ledisi singing the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Which is my favorite song I used to sing in the children’s choir at my Catholic grammar school.
But the highlight, besides the Eagles winning for any Eagles fans out there, was the halftime show with Kendrick Lamar.
YouTube won’t let me post the video here, but check it out for yourself.
Now mind you, upon first watching, I didn’t catch all of the symbolism. I, with older ears, was busy trying to catch all of the lyrics.
The performance was layer upon layer. And there are many breakdowns of his performance on FB, TikTok, and IG.
This was the Blackiety, Blackest, Super Bowl I’ve ever seen and it was in Black History Month. ✊🏾
Now, I don’t mean to brag or rub it in peoples’ faces, but when the administration is really targeting people of color, I just have to flex for a moment. Especially when White supremacy is full on showing their 🍑 and Elon throwing up the Sieg Heil Nazi salute, I needed to take a moment before going into what I really want to discuss today which also ties into White supremacy.
I’ve been discussing through my time on Substack my fascination of Peter Crosby, the first Black sheriff of Vicksburg and how his election led to the Vicksburg Massacre…
you can see from the picture below, there were many Black massacres in the United States. Back then, they called them race riots but really it was a way for angry Whites to execute, eliminate Black people and in quite a few cases take their land, squashing possibilities for Black generational wealth.
Many of these massacres stemmed from jealously and anger of Black people attaining political power.
In short, the White supremacists were like we are not going to have these N words telling us what to do, they need to stay in their place and how are they even achieving wealth. We just had on the books (the Constitution) a hundred years ago that they were 3/5’s of a human. That don’t make no G-damn sense.
Now, laying that as the background, I’ll take you to the 1870s.
Peter Crosby was elected sheriff of Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1873.
Take a moment to catch up on his background here, if you haven’t done so already. Which includes the setup for the massacre.
On Monday, December 7, 1874, a group of whites that opposed Crosby and a group of Blacks that supported him, marched into Vicksburg. There are various testimonies giving different accounts of who fired first, and there are various testimonies of the number of people were killed. One historian’s account of the Vicksburg Massacre notes that it “lasted for more than a week. When it was over, as many as three hundred black men were dead and an untold number of black women had been attacked, robbed and sexually assaulted.” (Dorsey, 1 )
Dorsey Jr, Albert. “Vicksburg’s Troubles”: Black Participation in the Body Politic and Land Ownership in the Age of Redeemer Violence, Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University 2012.
As I have been doing my research for my novel series on Vicksburg and the massacre, I found the United States Congressional Hearing transcript that began on December 14, 1874. I do respect the hearing took place shortly after the massacre. I think that’s impressive considering the time period.
Because of work and life events, I never finished reading through all of the testimonies in the hearing. I decided to get back on the ball this year and go through the hearing with you, my audience.
It’s been a while since I started the research, so discussing it with you will be a refresher for me along with sharing my thoughts and new discoveries for the testimonies I had not, yet gotten to.
As you can see, they called it, “Vicksburgh Troubles.” Not even race riot or God forbid massacre, but Troubles.
But look at the “Colored Witnesses Afraid to Testify.”
“For days and weeks a large portion of the colored population of the county had been hiding in the cane or in the woods for fear of death and injury.”
Though the massacre lasted a week, weeks of terror led up to the pivotal moment when all hell broke lose. We should hear about these weeks in the upcoming testimonies.
I also want to get you acquainted with the congressmen that were holding the hearing.
House Committee
Just a reminder that republicans and democrats held very different beliefs from today’s republicans and democrats. The republicans, in brief, favored the rights of Black people. And the democrats, were in favor of slavery. It’s much more complicated than that but when I go over the testimonies in future articles, I want you to have that frame of reference.
In the next article I will go over the STATEMENT OF FACTS.
This is really just the teaser to setup what’s to come in a new section called Vicksburg Massacre in my History’s Untold Stories in America.
There’s a lot to cover.
And I also wanted to mention something that I’m working on. I am hosting an online show “From Discord to Harmony: Charting America’s Path to Unity.”
We will speak on numerous topics that will help us understand how and why we are so divided in this country. And what steps we need to take to come together.
So, if you know of any historians, scholars, authors, experts, sociologists, who could speak on the history of the US, civics, economics, politics, American culture, please message me.
What I hope to accomplish is a deeper understanding of how we got here (Trump/Elon administration) and why.
I want the audience to get a better understanding of how the US government works.
And take away, what do we do now? What are the actionable steps? How can we as citizens get to a more even plane where we actually care about our fellow human beings?
This month’s history discussion for paid subscribers will take place on the last Sunday of the month, instead of Saturday. Sunday, February 23rd at 1pm (pst), 3pm (cst), 4pm (est).
Hope to see you at the next meeting.
If you found this article helpful, please like and share.
And don’t forget to comment.
Best,
Danita