Sometimes I think I'm Alex Haley

vizionheiry:

Thomas Jefferson’s record documenting the 600 African people he enslaved.

(via Slave images unearthed from the ‘Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello” exhibit at the Smithsonian - The Washington Post)

lolagetslife:

Now THIS is interesting!

auntada:

Attendants at Old Slave Day, Southern Pines, North Carolina

April 8, 1937

Photo forms part of the Portraits of African American ex-slaves from the U.S. WPA, Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives collection

Old Slave Day was a day set aside annually for former African American slaves. Participants spent the day in the Municipal Park sharing their experiences and recollections with the thousands of people, black and white, who came to see and hear them.

chocol8luv:

“In 1893, the Dawes Rolls was created by the United States government, recording every known Cherokee into three categories: freedmen, intermarried whites and Cherokee. There was a great deal of resistance from the Cherokees against the rolls because they assigned land, benefits and money along racial lines. Despite the fact that some Indians refused to join the rolls out of protest and some whites with only tangential connections to the Cherokee got on the rolls to get free land, the Dawes Rolls have remained the legal final say as to who is and who is not an American Indian in the United States.

This set the stage for the racial battles that current Chief Chad Smith is exploiting to ensure his re-election. The Treaty of 1866 required that all  freedmen be accepted as full citizens into the Cherokee nation as part of southern reconstruction.”

chocol8luv:

ecowaschild:

Door of No Return [by ECOWAS CHILD]

The Elmina Castle or the Castle of St. George was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea, which makes it the oldest European building in existence below the Sahara. First established as a trade settlement, the castle later became one of the most important stops on the route of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

This picture was taken in the castle during my trip to Ghana last year. The girl, Stephanie Beaute, is one of my class mates and she stands at the castle’s infamous “Door of No Return.” Take a quick guess as to why it is called such: Slaves were kept here for an average of two months and under the most inhumane of conditions. Those who survived captivity here left the castle through this door unto the slave ships, never to return to Africa.

Now I don’t know if you can tell, but the girl in this picture is pretty skinny and even she could barely fit through this door. When asked how people [for people come in many shapes and sizes] were able to go through this door, the guide answered, “by the time it came for transportation, the salves would’ve been heavily malnourished, so fitting them through the door was an easy task.

One should also know that this castle was pretty escape proof. This door itself led straight into the sea, and so when it came time for transport, the ships would pull by the wall and the slaves just shuffled on.

I’ve been there and I’ve never been inside a more daunting place.

(Source: thekingofversailles)

deluxvivens:

This beautifully written book tells the haunting saga of a quintessentially American family. It is the story of Shoe Boots, a famed Cherokee warrior and successful farmer, and Doll, an African slave he acquired in the late 1790s. Over the next thirty years, Shoe Boots and Doll lived together as master and slave and also as lifelong partners who, with their children and grandchildren, experienced key events in American history—including slavery, the Creek War, the founding of the Cherokee Nation and subsequent removal of Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War. This is the gripping story of their lives, in slavery and in freedom.

Meticulously crafted from historical and literary sources, Ties That Bind vividly portrays the members of the Shoeboots family. Doll emerges as an especially poignant character, whose life is mostly known through the records of things done to her—her purchase, her marriage, the loss of her children—but also through her moving petition to the federal government for the pension owed to her as Shoe Boots’s widow. A sensitive rendition of the hard realities of black slavery within Native American nations, the book provides the fullest picture we have of the myriad complexities, ironies, and tensions among African Americans, Native Americans, and whites in the first half of the nineteenth century.

6dollarsandacigarette:

slaves

North Carolina

Found a picture of my great-grandmother, Estelle

auntada:

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a publication first released in 1936 that served as a guide for African-American travelers. Because of the racist conditions during the time, blacks needed a reference manual to guide them to integrated or black-friendly establishments. The Green Book often provided information on local tourist homes, which were private residences owned by blacks and open to travelers. It was especially helpful to blacks that traveled through sunset towns or towns that publicly stated that blacks had to leave the town by sundown or it would be cause for arrest. Also listed were hotels, barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants, garages, liquor stores, ballparks and taverns. It also provided a listing of the white-owned, black-friendly locations for accommodations and food. 

The last edition was published in 1964, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

To view the entire 1949 edition, visit the following link:

  http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race/R_Casestudy/Negro_motorist_green_bk.htm

I couldn’t even fathom the  pain my ancestors had to endure…