8 Facts About Black History That We Didn't Learn In School (June 2020)

8 Facts About Black History That We Didn't Learn In School (June 2020)

Education
U.S. History
Black History
Slavery

English

Reviews U.S. Black historical information including the Black Panther Party, presidential perspectives on race, the constitution, and more.

@thekingofkamaahrbook

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBi21X6gL4S/

2020-06-17

Matthew Salzano

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBWVKl5Da1c/

1. 8 Facts About Black History That We Didn’t Learn in School
@thekingofkamaahrbook

2. 1. Police Originated As a Force to Capture Escaped Slaves
While textbook history teaches that the earliest organized police force was formed in Boston in 1838, the true history dates back to the slave patrols of the late 1600s and 1700s (1). The first official slave patrol was formed in 1704, with officers mounted on horses who would carry whips, ropes, and guns. Their role was to not only hunt down escaped slaves, but to use fear-based tactics to maintain order among populations of slaves. While slave patrols were disbanded after the Civil War, they laid the foundations for the Ku Klux Klan (2).

1) https://www.npr.org/2020/06/05/871083599/the-history-of-police-in-creating-social-order-in-the-u-s
2) https://www.insider.com/history-of-police-in-the-us-photos-2020-6#the-history-of-the-police-in-the-south-differs-from-other-parts-of-the-country-because-of-the-prominence-of-slavery-2

3. 2. President Lincoln Did Not Believe In Racial Equality
In a debate in 1858, Lincoln stated that, while he was opposed to slavery, he felt it was overly problematic for society to place Black Americans as equals with white. He stated: "What next? Free [slaves], and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not" (1). In 1862, he spoke with five free leaders of the Black community to discuss his proposed solution. He suggested that, rather than alter society to raise Black Americans to a level of equality with whites, they should be sent to colonies in South America once freed so that they would not suffer, and white Americans would not "suffer from their presence" (2).

1) https://mason.gmu.edu/~zschrag/hist120spring05/lincoln_ottawa.htm
2) https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:812?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

4. 3. President Nixon's War on Drugs Was Racially Motivated
President Nixon is quoted as saying "The whole problem is the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes that while not appearing to." John Erlichman, involved in Watergate, told reporters in 1994 that "The Nixon White House ... had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people ... We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidalm/2020/06/03/the-murder-of-fred-hampton-still-has-much-to-teach-watch-it-here/?sh=7f20856312f4

5. 4. The Black Panther Party's Contributions
The Black Panther Party established a free breakfast program for students across the country, serving 20,000 children at its peak in 1969. They felt that education was essential, and that having a full breakfast was important for making students ready to learn. The majority of funding came from local grocery stores and churches, as communities banded together to fight the effects of hunger and poverty. This program was dismantled by Hoover by the end of 1969, but it gave way to the USDA School Breakfast Program, which feeds 13 million children each day (1).The party also created a network of free medical clinics throughout the country. Their Ten Point Program was amended in 1972 to include this point: "We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival" (2).

1) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/the-black-panthers-revolutionaries-free-breakfast-pioneers
2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5024403/

6. 5. Black People Were Deemed a Subhuman Species
Doctors published papers on the physiological differences between White and Black people, using those differences to justify racial stereotypes and systematic racism. The false belief that Black people could withstand more pain led to unethical studies and experimentation. The physician Samuel Cartwright went so far as to say that forced labor was a treatment for the naturally weak lungs of black people. These harmful and incorrect theories still impact healthcare today. Cartwright's theory that Black people have lower lung capacity is still taught in medical textbooks. POC still receive less pain medication as compared to White patients due to the fallacy that they have a higher pain tolerance. Because these myths persist, medical professionals are able to blame higher health risks in POC on physiological differences rather than on the institutional racism and inequality that exists within the healthcare system.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-differences-doctors.html

7. 6. City Planning Was Racially Motivated
When interstates were constructed in the 50s and 60s, their paths were planned not for convenience, but to separate communities. Mayor William Hartsfield of Atlanta stated in the 1950s that highways would serve as a "boundary between the white and Negro communities" in the city. Highways often cut through neighborhoods with a majority of POC residents, allowing those neighborhoods to be demolished. Public transit systems, like MARTA in Atlanta, have had their expansion limited because residents of white suburbs feel that they are only for poorer citizens and do not want them in their suburbs (1). The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) established in 1934 used a process called redlining to rate neighborhoods on their prospects for getting insurance, loans, and mortgages. Neighborhoods with POC were marked with red on a map and considered ineligible for any financial investment, preventing expansion and improvement (2).

1) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/traffic-atlanta-segregation.html
2) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

8. 7. President Roosevelt's New Deal Essentially Excluded Black Americans
The New Deal, which created social programs that helped the country recover from The Great Depression, did not offer help to agricultural or domestic workers, the two professions with the highest percentage of Black American laborers. The G.I. Bill helped veterans find housing and make their way into the middle class. However, the Veterans Administration used the same redlining tactics as the FHA, meaning most Black veterans were still denied loans and mortgage-free housing. This generation of Black Americans had no savings to pass down to their children, robbing future generations of the main way most people accumulate their wealth.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html

9. 8. The 13th Amendment Allowed Slavery
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States" (1). This phrasing gives explicit permission for slavery to continue as part of the criminal justice system. Today, we see this manifested in the prison labor system. Prison labor can take many forms, from agriculture, to manufacturing, to even firefighting (2). Kevin Rashid Johnson, an activist and current inmate, describes his experience with prison labor: "prisoners are forced to work in the fields for free, entirely unremunerated ... They are given primitive hand-held tools like wooden sticks and hoes and forced to till the soil, plant and harvest cotton. They are watched over all day by guards on horseback carrying shotguns ... Prisoners who do not agree to such abject slavery are put in solitary confinement" (3). Prisoners who are paid for their labor are on wages of less than $1.50 an hour, meaning they often leave prison with no savings, unable to get themselves back on their feet (2). Prisons profit from this system (2).

1) https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=40&page=transcript
2) https://www.dressember.org/blog/is-prison-labor-slave-labor-a-look-at-both-sides
3) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/23/prisoner-speak-out-american-slave-labor-strike

10. Black History is United States History
This is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of human rights.

This is a post I made for my private Instagram account, but I felt that this information is important to share, so I decided to post it here as well. Over the past few weeks, I have learned more about Black history than I ever learned in school. Unfortunately, the education system often fails at teaching some of the most essential elements of history. It attempts to restrain Black history to one month, forgetting that Black history is United States history. In the slides above, I have included just a few of the things I have learned that were not taught in school. I have listed my sources on each slide, and I have also created a link which lists all of my sources (plus some other recommendations) if you are interested in looking at them yourself: 8facts.carrd.co
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I will continue to post books that I am reading on this journey to educate myself on important matters surrounding race. I also appreciate any suggestions if you have them!
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Edit: I have been advised that the term enslaved people is preferred to slaves, as it doesn't reduce those individuals to the conditions they were forced to live under. Like I said, this is a lifelong process of learning and there is always new information to be found! (Thank you @militant_macabre for this correction!)
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#blackhistory #amplifymelanatedvoices #blm #blacklivesmatter #diversifyyourreading #decolonizeyourbookshelves #readBlackauthors #bipocauthors #amplifyblackauthors #antiracism #antiracistbookclub #alwayslearning #lifelongwork #upliftblackvoices #supportblackauthors

White background with pink accents, including pink heading font color. Serif font headings in pink with black sans serif body text. Light gray footnotes are underneath text-heavy slides.

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