The NY Black History Panel Wants To Know What The Holdup Is!

New York wants to be the leader in introducing black history classes into the public school system.Or so the Amistad Commission thought!It's been 4 years since a law was passed to promote the teaching of black history & nothing has transpired!Here's more from the NY Times:

"Nearly four years after New York State passed a law creating a commission to promote the teaching of black history in public schools, the commission has never met, and 5 of its 19 seats have yet to be filled. For many educators and parents, the Amistad Commission, named after a slave ship seized by its captives, has become a modern-day symbol of bureaucratic inertia.

“New York, a pivotal state in African-American history, has not taken the lead here and we’re languishing,” said Manning Marable, a Columbia University professor of history and public affairs who was the first member appointed to the Amistad Commission. “It’s not just for black people, it’s for everyone. You can’t teach the history of this country effectively without teaching the contributions and experiences of black people.”

The Amistad Commission was modeled after a similar state commission in New Jersey that was established by a 2002 law requiring state schools to make black history part of the required curriculum. At least five other states — Florida, Arkansas, Illinois, Colorado and Michigan — have also adopted legislation requiring or encouraging the teaching of black history in schools, often along with the experiences of other minority groups, according to the Education Commission of the States.

The “Amistad” name comes from a schooner that was carrying a cargo of African slaves who revolted and killed the captain and cook in 1839. The slaves were captured and charged with murder, but with the help of former President John Quincy Adams, won their freedom through a United States Supreme Court ruling and returned to their homeland. The slave revolt was the basis for a popular movie, “Amistad,” in 1997.

In New York, the Amistad Commission is charged with surveying school curriculums to find out how much is included about “the African slave trade and slavery in America” and to make recommendations for improvement. Currently, schools are required to cover slavery, including the Underground Railroad and the freedom trail, as part of instruction in human rights issues for grades 8 to 12, according to the state education officials.

“That’s kind of laughable,” said Dr. Marable, the Columbia professor, who has been developing a Web site on black history for educators and parents with $240,000 in grants from the Ford Foundation. The Web site, known as the Amistad Resource, will feature texts, documents, and film and audio clips of civil rights demonstrations and other events.

Assemblyman Keith L. Wright, who sponsored the law creating the Amistad Commission, said that far too many students still “think of slavery as a Southern institution that happened below the Mason-Dixon line.”

“I don’t think enough black history is taught,” he said. “It’s too bad that Black History Month is the shortest month of the year, but it is what it is.”(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.

This is an interesting video that shows black history being taught to Brownsville,NY students.

Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley Was Said To Have Been An African Princess That Owned Slaves!

This is a remarkable book that tells the story of Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley. It's not a widely known piece of black history so I'd thought I'd post about it. She was said to have been an African princess who got abducted & sold into slavery.She ended up marrying her owner & becoming a plantation owner. She was one of the most revered women in Florida's black community. Here's the book's sypnopsis from Waterstones.com:

"Anna Kingsley's life story adds a dramatic chapter to histories of the South, the state of Florida, and the African diaspora. Working from surprisingly extensive records, including information and photographs from extended-family members and descendants, Daniel Shafer reconstructs and documents one slave's remarkable story. Both an American slave and a slaveowner - and possibly an African princess - Anna was a teenager when she was captured in her homeland of Senegal in 1806 and sold into slavery. Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., a planter and slave trader from Spanish East Florida, bought her in Havana, Cuba, and took her to his St. Johns River plantation in northeast Florida, where she soon became his household manager, his wife, and eventually the mother of four of his children. Her husband formally emancipated her in 1811, and she became the owner of her own farm and twelve slaves the following year. For 25 years, life on her farm and at the Kingsley plantation on Fort George Island was relatively tranquil. But when Florida passed from Spanish to American control, and racism and discrimination increased in the American territories, Anna Kingsley and her children migrated to a colony in Haiti established by her husband as a refuge for free blacks. Amid the spiraling racial tensions of the antebellum period, Anna returned to north Florida, where she bought and sold land, sued white people in the courts, and became a central figure in a free black community. Such remarkable accomplishments by a woman in a patriarchal society are fascinating in themselves. To have achieved them as a woman of color is remarkable." Here's the link to their website:
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=5105549

Book You Should Read: Lies My Teacher Told Me By James Loewen

This is what I am currently reading. I decided to blog about it because it is imperative that everyone study this book. True history is depicted here that helped validate my feelings about the way the past has been chronicled in American history textbooks. I never could keep from being easily distracted because it was so boring & incomplete. Well, this is one important work of history that has some of the omissions of black history in it. Reading this book will definitely help you see the correlation between the past & the present. It is a must-read!

Douglas Blackmon's Book "Slavery By Another Name" Deals With A Painful Part of Black History!

Douglas A. Blackmon has a book that every American should read because a brutal part of our history is told in it. It's called "Slavery By Another Name" & it talks about the reinvention of slavery due to the economic needs of the South. Forced labor camps was a source of terror for black men in the South. He talks about the "black code laws" that were enforced throughout the southern states. These laws helped imprison countless black men who were guilty of having black skin. It talks about how important these camps were to the economic stability of the South.What happened when blacks civil rights were restored through the emancipation of slaves is discussed in this book.The fact that it was too hard for the South to recover after the great economic loss that occurred once the slaves were freed. They couldn't make slavery legal unless they called it by a different name. And the general attitude of the whites who didn't believe in slavery was not one of sympathy. They didn't mind if blacks were still in servitude. This book says that these forced labor camps were around up until World War II.
For a lot of innocent blacks who have been jailed for crimes they did not committ, this story may sound familiar. Why are they building more prisons when there are so many schools closing down? This story may provide an explanation for why there are more prisons. With all the money prison generates, it sounds like the same situation to me. Ladies & gentlemen,I daresay that this is a familiar theme! I personally have seen black men get arrested, have drugs or guns planted on them, & then go to jail. That's what happened to those men in "Slavery By Another Name". Back then, it was the "black code laws" that could get someone a year in jail for vagrancy. These days it's the "war on drugs" that allows innocent black men to get framed to enter into a greedy prison system. There is cheap labor in prisons & terrible abuse. It is completely inhumane. So, I thought he was talking about the modern day prison system! It all sounds like similar motives are at play right now. You know what they say about history repeating itself. This is a must read for all those who feel the need to understand black history.