rixilla

02/17 FACT: Activist Marsha P. Johnson helped pave the way for transgender youth, thanks to her fearless belief in speaking truth to power. And she did it in style — complete with flower headpieces and lavish outfits, which were often thrifted or gifted from friends. Her name even radiated attitude, with her saying the “P” stood for “Pay it no mind.” Despite describing herself as a “nobody from Nowheresville,” she took part in what would become a catalyst for the LGBTQ+ movement. In 1969, she played a key role in the uprising against police at a popular gay bar in New York City in what became known as the “Stonewall uprising.” “We were just saying, ‘No more police brutality’ and ‘We had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places,’” she told historian Eric Marcus in a 1989 interview. Often suffering from homelessness herself, Johnson went on to launch the group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries as a way to offer houses to homeless and transgender youth. Tragically, in 1992, her body was found floating in the Hudson River, and the circumstances around her death remain unclear. Police initially ruled it as a suicide before reopening her case and it remains a mystery to this day. That said, it’s widely known that transgender people are often targets of violence. Last year, the Human Rights Campaign said that deaths of trans and gender nonconforming hit an all-time high of 32, and of those, people of color account for 81 percent of those victims.

rixilla

02/17 FACT: Activist Marsha P. Johnson helped pave the way for transgender youth, thanks to her fearless belief in speaking truth to power. And she did it in style — complete with flower headpieces and lavish outfits, which were often thrifted or gifted from friends. Her name even radiated attitude, with her saying the “P” stood for “Pay it no mind.” Despite describing herself as a “nobody from Nowheresville,” she took part in what would become a catalyst for the LGBTQ+ movement. In 1969, she played a key role in the uprising against police at a popular gay bar in New York City in what became known as the “Stonewall uprising.” “We were just saying, ‘No more police brutality’ and ‘We had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places,’” she told historian Eric Marcus in a 1989 interview. Often suffering from homelessness herself, Johnson went on to launch the group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries as a way to offer houses to homeless and transgender youth. Tragically, in 1992, her body was found floating in the Hudson River, and the circumstances around her death remain unclear. Police initially ruled it as a suicide before reopening her case and it remains a mystery to this day. That said, it’s widely known that transgender people are often targets of violence. Last year, the Human Rights Campaign said that deaths of trans and gender nonconforming hit an all-time high of 32, and of those, people of color account for 81 percent of those victims.

rixilla

02/09 FACT: Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Eastern Maryland sometime between 1820 and 1821. Because of the cruelty of her various masters, she desired to somehow escape from bondage from a very early age, and free others as well. She would later recall, "I had seen their tears and sighs, and I had heard their groans, and would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them."
          
          02/10 FACT : The transatlantic slave trade forcibly transported millions of Africans to the Americas, where they were enslaved on plantations, primarily for labor on crops like cotton and sugar; this system was brutal and dehumanizing, with enslaved people often denied basic rights and subjected to harsh punishments; the institution of slavery played a major role in the development of the American economy, and its abolition was a pivotal moment in the fight for racial equality;. 
          
          02/11 FACT :The schooner Clotilda (often misspelled Clotilde) was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted schooner, 86 feet (26.21 m) long, with a beam of 23 ft (7.01 m).
          
          02/12 FACTS : After the Civil War, Oluale Kossola and 31 other formerly enslaved people founded Africatown on the north side of Mobile, Alabama. They were joined by other continental Africans and formed a community that continued to practice many of their West African traditions and Yoruba language.
          
          02/13 FACTS: A spokesman for the community, Cudjo Lewis, lived until 1935 and was one of the last survivors from the Clotilda. Redoshi, another captive on the Clotilda, was sold to a planter in Dallas County, Alabama, where she became known also as Sally Smith. She married, had a daughter, and lived until 1937. She was long thought to have been the last survivor of the Clotilda. Research published in 2020 indicated that another survivor, Matilda McCrear, lived until 1940.

rixilla

02/16 FACT:  Often overlooked in history books, Eunice Hunton Carter has only recently gotten the attention she deserves in bringing down one of America’s most powerful mobsters, Charles “Lucky” Luciano. In 2018, her grandson, Stephen L. Carter, shed light on her trailblazing career by publishing a book about her entitled, Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster. In it, he delves into his grandmother’s extraordinary work as the first Black woman to serve as a prosecutor in the New York County Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Then, in 1935, she was appointed as a key assistant to special prosecutor Thomas Dewey, and she helped establish key facts in the prosecution against Luciano, which included piecing together how he was profiting from prostitution. Due in large part to her hard work and dedication, Luciano was ultimately convicted on related charges and sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison in 1936. He was paroled early for his “wartime services” and deported back to his home in Italy 11 years later.
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rixilla

02/15 FACT :  Before Serena Williams or Simone Biles, there was Alice Coachman. In 1948, she became the first Black woman from any country to win an Olympic gold medal, but as the story goes for so many Black people,  she had to fight to reach this historic feat. Born in Georgia, the heart of the segregated south, she faced racism and was repeatedly denied the opportunity to train for or compete in organized sports events. Ever the innovator, she improvised by running barefoot on dirt roads and using sticks and rope to practice the high jump. Eventually, she caught the attention of a well-known historically Black school, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama (now Tuskegee University), where she broke records and dominated competitions. But her Olympic dreams were temporarily put on hold due to the outbreak of World War II, and it would be a few years before she was able to compete. But when she did, she didn’t disappoint. Despite a back injury, Coachman set a record in the high jump with a mark of 5 feet, 6 1/8 inches. To this day, she continues to inspire others to pursue their athletic dreams, even if there are obstacles in their way. “When the going gets tough and you feel like throwing your hands in the air, listen to that voice that tells you ‘Keep going,’” she once said.
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rixilla

02/14 FACT: Eko and Iko were the sideshow stage names of George and Willie Muse, the grandsons of former slaves. They were born at the turn of the century to parents who sharecropped tobacco, like everyone else in the rural enclave of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie were just six and nine, as the elders tell the story, when a circus promoter crept onto the tobacco field where they were working and enticed them with a rare piece of candy. In the time it took to fetch a hoe from the shed, the boys vanished. They were kidnapped in a dusty corner of southern Virginia named for the only thing that gave these Reconstruction-era blacks any semblance of hope—the biblical promise of a better life in the hereafter. “I am the true vine, and My father is the vine dresser,” Jesus said in the Gospel of John. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” For the next 13 years, their mother, Harriett, watched and worried. And she waited for signs of fruit. They were easy pickings for a traveling circus. The brothers were African-American albinos with watery blue eyes and blond hair, and their vision was poor, the result of an oscillating eye condition routinely misinterpreted as a mental deficiency. In the late 19th century, the height of circus popularity, bounty hunters scoured America’s backwoods—and the world—looking for people they could transform into sideshow attractions. Acts such as Chang and Eng, the world’s most famous conjoined twins, “discovered” by a British merchant in Siam (now Thailand) in 1829. Or the Wild Men of Borneo, as impresario P.T. Barnum pitched a pair of dwarf brothers to audiences in 1880 . . . though they actually hailed from a farm in Ohio.
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rixilla

TODAY'S FACT: Nat Turner was an enslaved Black carpenter and preacher who led a four-day rebellion of both enslaved and free Black people in Southampton County, Virginia in August 1831.
          
          If you would like to learn more about him there are lots of books, however it's only so much that Wattpad would let me share on my message board!

rixilla

YESTERDAY’S FACT: * While Jackie Robinson is well-known for breaking baseball color barriers, a minor league player named Bud Fowler actually played in the professional leagues before him, though his impact was short-lived . 
          
          TODAY’S FACT: According to available historical records, William Tucker is considered the first known African American born free in the United States, born in the Virginia colony around 1624 to African indentured servants, Isabell and Anthony, making him the first child of African descent documented in English North America.

rixilla

YESTERDAY’S FACT: Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in 1773. Born in the Gambia and sold to the Wheatley family in Boston when she was 7 years old, Wheatley was emancipated shortly after her book was released.
          
          TODAY’S FACT: In case you didn’t already know, the creator of Black History Month was historian Carter G. Woodson. Often referred to as the “Father of Black History,” he was notably the second African American to graduate from Harvard University with a doctorate degree, and is credited with being one of the first scholars to study and research the history of African Americans.

rixilla

HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH, no matter how much they try to erase history it will always remain. That being said, each day there will be a new black history fact posted here on my message board!
          
          TODAYS FACT: While Rosa Parks is credited with helping to spark the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her public bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955-inspiring the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The lesser-known Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months prior for not giving up her bus seat to white passengers. However, Civil rights leaders decided not to publicize Colvin's case because they believed she was unmarried and pregnant. They also felt that a pregnant teenager would be controversial. She is still alive till this day.

Lovelex1_lopez

@rixilla I LOVE YOU FOR THISS
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