The words of John Trudell | The Genius George S. Schuyler | June O'Brien Book Series | Dr. Paulette Steeves (and BIG LOVE TO Y'all)
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| it's our evolution |
FREEDUMB: Jul 26, 2011 NATIVE AMERICAN ACTIVIST, POET AND MUSICIAN JOHN TRUDELL SPEAKS IN LOS ANGELOS.
"I have the occasional ability to be coherent. They don't want us thinking..." John Trudell
"Everything is about energy..." - John Trudell
“Black Genius Against the World”
Brooks E. Hefner, February 1, 2023, Public Books
“Is the Black Internationale a true story?” wrote Bernice Brownlee of Wewoka, Oklahoma to the Pittsburgh Courier in 1937. She—and many other readers—wanted to know more about the newspaper’s new fictional serial: “The Black Internationale: Story of Black Genius Against the World.” Harry Louis Cannady of Avella, Pennsylvania, wrote, “Is the Black Internationale a true story? I was a member of the 367th Infantry regiment in the World War and if the Black Internationale is a real organization, I want to join it.” Samuel L. Thorpe Jr. of Miami, Florida, for example, wrote, “One of the purposes in my life when I have finished my college career is to imitate in a rather modest way, ‘Dr. Belsidus.’ I have always longed for the day when racial equality will come to pass and until the day comes, I shall never be satisfied.”
Although speculative fiction, the Pittsburgh Courier trumpeted this serial and its sequel as dramatically as if they were the real thing. The newspaper promoted and described “The Black Internationale” as “not a story exclusively about American Negroes, but about Negroes everywhere, united by a common bond of hatred of white exploitation, persecution and ostracism.” It further centered the movement’s leader, Henry Belsidus, as a hero in this work: “One determined black man, educated, suave, immaculate, cruel (at times) and unmoral, gathers around him the genius of the Negro world, and using every device imaginable, organizes the greatest conspiracy in history against White Supremacy!”
African American writer George S. Schuyler is famous for two especially controversial things: his biting 1931 Afrofuturist satire Black No More and his hard turn to the political right wing after World War II. Unfortunately, both of these have obscured something rather extraordinary: Schuyler was one of the most prolific African American writers of popular genre fiction in the first half of the 20th century. And he was, almost certainly, the most prolific writer of genre fiction about African Americans during this time. Both sides of Schuyler’s fame can be seen in his writing, using a pseudonym, of the two serials that comprise Black Empire.
Even if the Black Empire serials remained for many years largely forgotten in the microfilmed pages of The Pittsburgh Courier,
they nonetheless represent a powerful and prescient example of work
that anticipates later Black speculative fiction and Afrofuturism, from
the satire of Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo to the revolutionary
novels of Sci Fi genius Samuel Delany to the utopian world of Black Panther’s Wakanda
to the bold contemporary experiments of N. K. Jemisin and Nnedi
Okorafor, among many others...
continue
I'm reading:
The Dawn of Scientific Racism
In the 1740s, Bordeaux developed some of the first modern theories of racial difference, even as the city profited from the slave trade. ... “What is the physical cause of the Negro’s color, the quality of [the Negro’s] hair, and the degeneration of both [Negro hair and skin]?” asked the Royal Academy of Science of Bordeaux in 1741.
Located on the Garonne River, which offered direct access to the
Atlantic, the port of Bordeaux had become by the 1740s nothing less than
“the busiest and most important anchorage in France”: a pivotal point
of the French triangular SLAVE trade system that moved people, plantation
products, and manufactured goods between the African continent, Europe,
and European colonies in the Americas. Bordeaux’s shipowners, referred
to as armateurs in period French, “organized roughly 500
expeditions to Africa, which resulted in the deportation of
approximately 150,000 Africans to French plantations between 1672 and
1837—approximately 13 percent of the 1.2 million enslaved Africans who
arrived in the French colonies alive.”
This is ME👇
2-14-23 (Hey - it's VALENTINE'S DAY! XOXOXOX)
There is a chorus of coyotes singing outside my window and I thought I needed to blog you all... Have you been dreaming? Are your dreams vivid? In color?
I read that February would be a good time to pay attention to dreams. I keep a notebook near the bed and try and capture details, at whatever hour... let me know in a comment if you are remembering dreams... I am!
I send you all LOVE, today and every day... TLH
And I just finished the BLUE CHILD book series by June O'Brien (Nansemond Tribe), only available on Amazon (sadly).
I have changed reading her 4 books and will reread them - which means THESE BOOKS ARE EXTRA EXTRAORDINARY! For a Native person, these books are out-of-this -world and JUNE is a dreamer/visionary. (The last book in the series in BENEATH THE ALTAR/2022.)
Another person to read and follow: Dr. Paulette Steeves
MY NEW HERO:
Strange, feeling to be sitting here watching my self on TV. I never imagined I’d be on the show like the nature of things but I’m very grateful for the opportunity to share what I have learned about deep indigenous histories. Lol I just had to take a pic of myself on TV. pic.twitter.com/eNVTde14MU— Dr. Paulette Steeves (@PauletteSteeves) February 11, 2023
The recent discovery of ancient fossilized footprints in a New Mexico desert challenges everything we thought we knew about humans populating North America.
'Walking With Ancients' is now streaming free on @cbcgem and airs Fri. Feb. 10 @ 9pm on @cbc TV: https://t.co/LotS04EUyE— CBC Docs (@cbcdocs) February 10, 2023
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