Black History Month

Telling Our Stories: Black History Month DUKES FANS: Someone will have to tell my story; I guess it will have to be me.” poet Langston Hughes I have been a history freak since, well, since forever. I can recall being a young child, looking through the World Book Encyclopedias that my mother sold, and being fascinated by people, times and events that had happened a long time ago. In elementary school I was likewise fascinated by what had happened years ago and by famous historical people. I memorized a lot of names and dates, was captured and intrigued by time lines, and fell in love with the 300 and 900 stacks in the Free Library-the stacks that by Dewey’s system contained most of the historical material. I knew that if I was interested in subject “A” and the book I was looking for wasn’t in, I could look to the right or to the left of where that book should be and there would be something as interesting as what I had been looking for originally. All this fed my insatiable curiosity, made me hungry for knowledge, and turned me into someone who looked for connections between ideas, times and people. That interest continues to this very day. Whenever we travel somewhere new and are walking around my wife can often be heard to say, “You never met an historical marker you didn’t love!” It is no surprise that for some 40 years I taught history and English in middle and high school. The ideas about history that I encountered in my official education were initially cursory and spotty. We were taught the names of famous people, largely white, and we looked at events through the lens of great accomplishments; things that made the United States great. But from all the reading I was doing before I even started school, I knew I wanted more. The Philadelphia Free Library was a place where I could satisfy part of that desire. I grew up during the 1950’s and 1960’s, and there was an explosion of new ways of looking at history happening then. New sources were being found and explored. New interpretations of time periods and events abounded. New theories about history were being put forth, and different people’s stories were now being included. The library was an important gateway to all of that for me; I was able to find out things I had little knowledge about due to the wealth of information in those stacks. What I found in one book led me to still others. The more I found, the more I wanted to find out. For an insatiably curious kid, it was an information smorgasbord. We also had the wonders of Negro History Week when I was growing up-a week during which special emphasis was given to studying the stories and history of Negro people, as we were then called. My church and my school provided some books, told us some stories, and put on some plays that got me exposed and interested in the lives of men and women who were generally not in the school's history books. Negro History Week was an endless source of discoveries; it was a joy to uncover so much that had been missing or hidden. The joy of that "uncovering" has stayed with me. I still love finding out “new” information and new ways of looking at the past. Part of the beauty and power of that week for me was that it had been started by us-we were starting to tell our own stories publicly and officially. Negro History Week was started by a Black historian in the mid-1920’s. Carter G. Woodson, the son of slaves, had received a doctorate from Harvard in 1912, and he realized that in most history books Blacks were either depicted in stereotypical and inaccurate ways or not mentioned at all. To counter this he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life in 1915, and he started publishing The Journal of Negro History, a publication that featured historical research about Blacks and their lives. The Journal published research articles by and about Blacks and was distributed to schools and people who educated Blacks. Interest in the publication and topic soared, and it became a central repository for historical research about Blacks. In 1926 the Association established Negro History Week, a time for black churches, students, communities, colleges, and more to focus on the history of Blacks in this country and the world. He set it in the second week of February because that was between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12th) and Frederick Douglass (believed to be February 18th). For decades it was something that Blacks observed on their own with essay contests, plays, research projects, special sermons, articles in the Black press, and more. Eventually some cities began to issue proclamations recognizing the celebration, and it came more into public view. The Civil Rights Movement and the rise of Black Power in the 1960’s and 1970’s gave it a new emphasis, and it became more of a regular part in many school curricula, especially Black colleges. By then it had been renamed and had expanded to Black History Month, and it was much more visible. President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month nationally in 1976 to coordinate with the bi-centennial of the country. It has been officially recognized by most schools and communities since then. Newspapers, TV networks, and radio stations do special programming, and cities host special breakfasts, award ceremonies, essay contests, and more. It is pretty much in the mainstream now. To me one of the things this month can do is allow us to pause, slow down and take a deeper look at a lot of our assumptions and collective knowledge about who we are as a country. Yes, we have many renditions of the, "I Have a Dream" speech,and we talk often in generalities about different parts of the African-American experience. But if the month can be seen as an opportunity to expand our knowledge and better understand where we as an entire culture have been, the month can give us ways to deepen our understandings about this place and ways the past influences the present. We know some things about slavery, for example, but for most of us slavery was something that happened on plantations and in the South-it was about picking things and working in the fields and the “Big House.” The reality is far more complicated than that; there was slavery in each and every colony before the American Revolution and in each and every state after the Revolution. And all the activities and structures needed and developed to support slavery were at the very heart of US economic growth throughout the 18th and 19th century-shipping, banking, the stock market, trade, and more. Slavery fueled much of the growth of the country. In fact 12 of our Presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives, and eight of them held slaves while they were Presidents.The New York Historical Society had a monumental exhibit in 2005 and 2006 on Slavery in New York City, and the history it revealed blew people's minds. It totally changed many people’s ideas about what the 19th century was about and the role of the Big Apple in slavery during that time. People had not realized that New York had been a slave state, and that its role in banking, shipping, and trade made it the actual center of the entire United States slave system. No NYC at that time, little or no slavery in the country.(http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/ ) Likewise, there is a website developed in 2003 by historian Douglas Harper called, “Slavery in the North” that examines how each colony and state north of the Mason-Dixon line carried out their involvement with the “peculiar institution.” (http://slavenorth.com/index.html) Looking at these sites and other books, films, etc. deepened my knowledge and unearthed moving and amazing stories about which I had known little. And it can do that for all of us. That is one of the wonderful things about history-there is usually so much more beneath the surface of any one thing than we see at first glance. There is always much to be uncovered and brought forth, but we must be willing to look, see and to dig. I love that digging. I hope this Black History Month finds you looking in new places for new things and discovering and uncovering new facts and new people. There is a universe of largely unknown, people whose lives have amazing stories to tell and whose accomplishments are astonishing. If I may jump start that for you, let me toss out some names with whom you may not be familiar: Benjamin Banneker, Bass Reaves, Miriam Benjamin, Daniel Hale Williams, and Valerie Thomas. If you are curious, look them up and see who they were and what they did, and how they are connected to so many things we take for granted. Dig, uncover, and enjoy

January and Snow

DUKES FANS: In my last newsletter I talked about the quiet mornings and the wonderful skies of January. This week we see the other side of January, and it is not so pleasant. It has been about a decade since this area has had a doble digit snowfall, and we are generally freaking out in trying to prepare for the 10-12 inches of snow forecasters are expecting. There have been long lines at hardware stores, grocery stores, and mall stores all week There have been shortages of snow salt, shovels, and other winter gear. Milk and eggs are also in short supply. This has been a multi-day attempt to prepare for the coming storm. In my West Mt Airy neighborhood people have been working together to meet the threat. Folks have compiled lists of young folks who would be willing to shovel sidewalks and clean off cars. There are dozens of folks with dogs in the area, and people have been sharing info about where to get pet safe snow salt and ice melt to meet the anticipated snow amounts we will get. Two neighbors who saw me getting the paper today checked to see if I have someone to shovel (I do) and if I needed them to run to the store for me (I didn’t). I love the way we look out for each other here. We, of course, have no way of knowing exactly how big this storm will be. But accept that it will most probably be a big one. Be prepared; have batteries, fully charged phones, flashlights, and at least two days of food. And check in with elderly neighbors and relatives. I hope we can all get through fairly well through these next few days.

From Black Friday to Giving Tuesday: Commerce and Thanks

Folks: People on the Dukes e-mail list have not gotten anything from me in a while due to problems with my att.net e-mail server. For the past three weeks I have been unable to send e-mails from that account. I can receive them and read them, but I cannot send any e-mails whether they are individual e-mails group e-mails ot just a return email. So I have transferred my Dukes' Mailing lists to a different account and will try to send them. There are no Dukes gigs listed in this e-mail; I am trying to see if this works. I hope it does. I have been busy doing some video work with Johnny and addressing some other things, so I am re-printing an earlier blog about the history of Black Friday and the meaning and importance of Giving Tuesday. Thanks. John FROM BLACK FRIDAY TO GIVING TUESDAY: THANKSGIVING, AND COMMERCE There have always been links between seasonal changes and commerce. Early human groups traveled across different places at different times in the year and found different things available for both consuming and trading. In the ancient world, spring meant hunting and trading for more plants and seeds, and going to where the herds of animals and schools of fish were plentiful in order to get more. Autumn meant increased hunting, trading, gathering and traveling to harvest plants and to get supplies and shelter for winter. Most hunting-gathering people already saw religious and mythological links between changes in seasons and their lives, so the special importance of different products at different times became natural. The original autumnal “thanksgivings” were literally the “giving of “Thanks” to the gods for a good harvest and/or hunt, and also a hope for surviving the winter. As cities and the lifestyle known as civilization developed, more extensive trading and conquering happened, and many more things became available. New products came from different parts of the world, and the having of lots of products became associated with everything from class level to social wealth to religious worth to personal worth, to political power and more. Civilizations keep producing and developing more products at an ever-increasing rate. And when civilizations developed into empires, the importance of having, trading, giving, and owning products exploded exponentially. Commerce became more and more of a driving force in cultures. Over time we have developed systems for coming up with new products to keep the commerce flowing: Research and Development, planned obsolescence, and upgrades. We have come up with more ways of putting products in front of people-signs, advertising campaigns, product placement, pop-up ads embedded in websites, celebrity endorsements, and more. The bazaars and marketplaces of the old days have been replaced by shopping malls, warehouse outlets and now online giants such as Amazon are replacing many brick and mortar stores. And there is no end in sight to this growth and expansion. After the 1924 debut of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, this post-Thanksgiving weekend quickly became the start of our “winter shopping season.” The gift-giving associated with the Christmas story became more and more the focus of Christmas, and the Friday after Thanksgiving was the time to get it started. Stores and shops ran special sales and campaigns to get people into the stores and opening up the wallets and pocketbooks. And this year it even started before Halloween. The term for that time is, of course, “Black Friday”, and the origin of that term has a dark side to it. In the 1950s, police in Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving. Hordes of shoppers and tourists flooded into the city to take advantage of the sales and in advance of the big Army-Navy football game that used to be held here every year on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Suburbs were relatively new and expanding, and the new highways and freeways made it easier for suburbanites to get into the city to shop as well as go to sporting events. Philly cops had to work extra-long shifts dealing with the increasing mess of huge crowds and miles of traffic problems. Shoplifters also took advantage of the bedlam in stores to make off with merchandise, and pickpockets endlessly worked the crowds. To police, then, the Friday after Thanksgiving was not joyous at all. Instead, it was “black.” By 1961, “Black Friday” had become the local term for that day in Philadelphia. Retailers tried unsuccessfully to change it to “Big Friday” in order to remove the negative connotations of the term, but that term didn’t take off. “Black Friday” was what it was called, and Black Friday it remained. So retailers did the next best thing: they changed the meaning and explanation for the term. They turned it into a story about businesses on that day suddenly making a profit-going into the black. This new story of what Black Friday meant caught on, and the term’s true origin was forgotten. Not only did the phrase catch on across the nation. And what was originally a one-day event slowly morphed into a four-day event that spawned other “retail holidays” such as Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday” came into being in 2005 as an idea to encourage people to shop online and build this new thing known as online businesses. With the amount of online shopping increasing over time and really jumping due to COVID, it is estimated that Cyber Monday this year will bring in some 20 billion dollars. Clearly this seasonal urge to spend is quite powerful in our culture. It even applies to charities and non-profits. A 2023 survey found the some 50% of charities and non-profits reported that most of their individual contributions came in between October and December. The ideas of holiday gifting, seasonal calls for thinking of others, and tax deductions combined to drive more charitable fundraising these last three months of the year. And this has resulted in the development of “Giving Tuesday.” Giving Tuesday is a day for making donations to fund good causes following Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The founders wanted people to focus on giving after their weekend shopping spree, and to see a seamless link between spending for family and self and giving to help others. The idea quickly took off, and it is now an international movement. It even has its own website- https://www.givingtuesday.org/about which serves as a conduit connecting groups, causes, organizations and individuals. The website has history, tools to get organized, and connections to local movements from around the world. Given the widespread challenges presented by the effects of the COVID pandemic, increased natural disasters and increases in worldwide poverty rates, support for charitable institutions is even more critical. Giving Tuesday is one way of making that support possible. So the “Black Friday” phenomenon can, and in many ways, has definitely overwhelmed the intended sense of the original autumnal thanksgivings. It often seems to be about things and about consumption above all else. But with a true focus on gratitude, it can be about the simple joys of family and friends get-togethers. And it can also lead to a “Giving Tuesday” if we allow ourselves to get beyond consumption and the products and onto to something more meaningful. We can find another way to extend the notion of gratitude by giving back and giving to. I hope more of us can move to that this year. If you are so moved, please go to: https://www.givingtuesday.org/about