This is getting a little buzz around the internet. Poet Taalam Acey brings the heat on this one.

Warning: Language

Popularity: 83% [?]

This just goes to show you that Richard Pryor, in a lot of ways, was much deeper than some gave him credit for being. He was one of the greatest social commentators I’ve ever seen and had a way articulating the profound in a very straightforward, but clever, manner. This is one example.

Popularity: 55% [?]

I like stories like this. Here we have a young pilot looking to leave his mark on history. 23-year-old aerospace student Barrington Irving took off last Friday in hopes of becoming both the youngest person and the first black person to ever fly solo around the world.

He gets my respect for just getting to this point. Irving’s project came at a cost of $1,000,000, including $300,000 in donated parts he used to build his plane. Though $20,000 short of his goal, Irving is stepping out on faith and has embarked on his journey.

So, hopefully, on April 30th, Irving will return home as the owner of two new aviation records.

Popularity: 67% [?]

“The Tuskegee Experiment, indeed it was big
When they used the black man as a guinea pig.”

“Anger In The Nation” - Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth

It is almost unfathomable to know how low some people will go in their treatment of black folks. If you’re poor, very little regard is given to you. If you add being black to the mix, you life is easily expendable.

This is, basically, what was uncovered by Harriet Washington, a med-school graduate and former fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School. Washington has written a new book titled “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.” As the title denotes, the infamous Tusekgee Experiment was not the only instance in which the lives of black folks were either unwillingly or unwittingly put at risk for the sake of medical research — research, mind you, that was illegal and/or unethical.

Washington was able to find incidents that ranged from well before the Tuskegee Experiment to the very recent future. Here are some examples:

• The 1855 case of escaped slave John Brown who recounted how his former master would cause deep blisters on his body “to see how deep black skin went.”
• The forced sterilization of black women, which began in slavery. However, this culminated in the Norplant trials in 1991 in which black Baltimore teenage girls were given birth control implants but weren’t adequately informed on the potential risks of the drug.
• The research of J. Marion Sims, a 19th century doctor and American Medical Association President, who developed his gynelogical treatments by experimenting on black slave women without anesthesia.
• The 1998-2001 study in which New York foster children with AIDS where given potentially dangerous drugs, often without parental permission. Some children were as young as 6 months of age. 80% of New York’s foster children are black.

Washington comes to a conclusion that many, including myself, deem true. The history of these experiments has bred a distrust among black people for the medical establishment and, thus, makes them, by far, less inclined to participate in clinical studies. In fact, black participation in biomedical studies is only at 1%.

Needless to say, I will be getting this book.

Popularity: 75% [?]

For those of us aware of our history, we know that, far too often, the crimes against people pursuing civil rights for all, including murder, have been allowed to go on without most involved ever being brought to justice. In many cases, it was well-known who committed the crimes but, in juries comprised of friends and like-minded people, killers were often allowed to, literally, get away with murder.

So, while nothing new is here, it is interesting to see USA Today run a piece on why so many Civil Rights era killings went unprosecuted. It was clear that, particularly in the period from 1954-1968, many of these crimes went uninvestigated, much less acted upon.

Well, I am sure that USA Today is only running this piece because it’s Black History Month but, at least, they are will to deal with a piece of Black history that is a little more challenging to the thinking than the standard fare offered this time of year.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Today is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Jan. 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968). Every year on this website (in a previous version of blackmystory.com), I made sure to post Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in its entirety. I have found that, in my lifetime, people have used brief quotes and passages from this speech to make Dr. King a symbol of passivity and to lull black folks into not acting in their own interests. However, to anyone who has heard/read the speech in its entirety, it is clear that this speech exemplified the very opposite of what some would have us believe.

This year, of course, is no exception so, I bring you the full text of the “I Have A Dream” speech.

—-

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

Read More… »

Popularity: 39% [?]

Well, America, what took you so long? At long last, there will be a monument on the National Mall honoring an African American.

Today, the groundbreaking occurred for a monument in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The monument will reside near where he gave his historic 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech. When it’s completed in 2008, it will mark the culmination of a 10-year struggle to bring this to fruition.

Well, it looks like a road trip for me and my family to D.C. in 2008.

Popularity: 36% [?]

In the town of Butler, GA, a display commemorating the town’s WWII veterans resides in the courthouse. There are two lists of names. Is one for the living who returned home vs. those who died on the battlefield? Of course not. One would just need to look at the top of each list to know how they are categorized. One reads “White”, the other reads “Colored”.

Now, granted, this was put up in 1944 and we realize that this was a different time in our country. But, come on, isn’t it time to make some changes? The county commission has created a second, integrated list that for all those same service members and some they missed but, they also plan on keeping this up. They offer the following rationales for doing so:

“If we erase everything we find offensive or don’t like, then it may happen again,” said Sybil Willingham, chairwoman of the county’s Historic Preservation Commission.

“The two existing lists are not to be taken down because it’s against the law and it’s historic,” she said, citing a law that makes it unlawful for people to “mutilate, deface, defile, or abuse” public monuments honoring servicemembers.

Now, you may not be able to “mutilate, deface, defile, or abuse” such monuments but, I don’t see “remove” on this list so, why not just take it down?

Popularity: 32% [?]

One of the big stories of last night had to be the victory of Deval Patrick, making him the first black governor ever in Massachussets and only the second black governor in U.S. history.

Patrick overcame a race that, at times, was very ugly and contentious, including a tactic from his opponents camp that played on racial fears and, for a while, seemed to be channeling the old Willie Horton scare tactic.

But, nonetheless, the former Coca-Cola executive-cum-politician overcame this to become governor in his first run for political office. Of course, the hard work is ahead of him but, hats off to Mr. Patrick for this history-making achievement.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Way to go Virginia! In a first-of-its-kind move, the state will participate in a project to index and digitize Freedman’s Bureau records. This will allow the descendents of emancipated slaves, freed slaves and Union soldiers to electronically search for information on their ancestors.

The Freedmen’s Bureau records are effectively the “genesis records” of African- American identity post Civil War. They provide the earliest major compilation of information on the African-American community, documenting for the period 1865-1872 names, legalized marriages, educational pursuits, work contracts, and receipt of rations, health care, legal, and other services.

After nearly five years of effort, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of the United States recently completed the microfilming of all Bureau records, which produced over 1,000 rolls of microfilm. The Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) will scan these records and provide overall direction to the extraction effort, and FamilySearch will provide online access to the genealogy-related data extracted.

The GSU is now scanning the 203 rolls containing the Virginia records, and will assess over 300,000 digitally scanned images for inclusion in the Virginia Freedmen Project. Ultimately, Howard University will place the broader collection of extracted and indexed records on the Internet for access to genealogists and historians.

Well, I hope that other states soon follow. I would be interested in looking up some history on my own family.

Popularity: 34% [?]