Hey to Your Mama N'em

Images and accounts of how people of African descent worked, raised families, built communities, worshiped, expressed themselves and coped with changes and challenges in the past. "We have beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that...

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H.R. 4982, a bill granting a pension to Harriet Tubman Davis, late a nurse in the U.S. Army, 01/19/1899

During the Civil War abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman Davis served the Union side as a scout, nurse, cook and spy. After the war she received a pension as the widow of a Union veteran. Tubman later petitioned Congress for additional benefits for her own service.  Congress received numerous documents and letters supporting Tubman’s claim. In 1899 Congress passed, and the President signed, H.R. 4982, which authorized an increase of Tubman’s pension to twenty-five dollars per month for her service as a nurse.

via the Claim of Harriet Tumban from the Center for Legislative Archives

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Derek Walcott, Who Wrote Of Caribbean Beauty And Bondage, Dies At 87

The Nobel Prize winner celebrated his Caribbean homeland and described its brutal colonial history. "You didn't make yourself a poet," he said. "You entered a situation in which there was poetry."

Rest in peace

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This is a woman named Callie House (b. 1861 in slavery, d. 1928), the leader of the largest-ever — and possibly least-known — African-American freedom organization, the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension association. A washer-woman from Nashville with five children, who received only a rudimentary education, House worked with several Primitive Baptist ministers to establish a network of 350-400,000 ex-slaves and family members of ex-slaves across the South. Their constituency was generally destitute, but their operations were totally run by membership dues, which both helped with the cost of lobbying Washington for pensions for ex-slaves and served as a mutual aid fund to cover the costs of life events like burials.

This massive network of poor black men and women was seen as a direct threat to the political powers, which worried that her agitation would turn African-Americans into “anarchists” by organizing them around a cause that could not possibly succeed. Rather than acceding to the demand of a monthly pension and a lump “bounty” for every ex-slave and legal guardian of ex-slaves, the State instead slapped the organization with faulty charges of mail fraud, imprisoning House for 10 months. The campaign for pensions did not survive her imprisonment, but individual chapters functioned as mutual aid societies until the 1950s.

The growing black middle-class and black elite mostly shunned House’s efforts, as did newspapers black and white. House died of uterine cancer, and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her story was remembered only by the descendents of her ex-slave comrades, until Mary Frances Berry published My Face Is Black Is True in 2005.

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Sisters of the Holy Family, New Orleans, Louisiana

ca. 1899

Reportedly displayed as part of the American Negro exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Library of Congress

The Catholic order of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans was founded in 1842 by Henriette DeLille, a free woman of color. Born to privilege and well educated, Henriette chose a life of caring for and educating the poor over a life of ease. At the time of Henriette’s death in 1862, the order numbered 12 members. By 1909, there were 150 members operating schools in New Orleans that served 1,300 African American students, caring for orphans and the elderly, and doing missionary work in Belize.

The order remains active today. 

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When Ida B. Wells Married, It Was a Page One Story

A journalist and fighter for the rights of black Americans and women, she postponed the wedding three times because of he...

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The collection was assembled by John B. Cade Sr., a professor and dean at Southern University in the early twentieth century. Cade and a group of his students traveled throughout the South in the 1…

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NASA's Jeanette Epps just made history.

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My President Was Black

A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next

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In the Early 1900s, Albino African-American Brothers Were Stolen From Their Virginia Home to Be Circus Performers

This is their story.

This is heartbreaking.

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Yale just named a classroom after their very first black student, James Pennington

James Pennington, a former slave who attended Yale in the 1830s even though it was illegal, was honored by having a classroom named after him.

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'Darktown' Imagines What It Was Like For Atlanta's First Black Policemen

In 1948, eight African-American men joined Atlanta's police force. Those pioneer officers — who couldn't drive squad cars or even step foot in headquarters — inspired Thomas Mullen's new novel.

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You can’t tell U.S. history without black history. Finally, a museum gets that.

Our story is more than a timeline from Crispus Attucks to Michelle Obama.

Excellent review of the NMAAHC by Blair L.M. Kelley, associate professor of history and assistant dean of Interdisciplinary Studies and International Programs at NC State University.

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For a while she was a name and a status — enslaved. Now we know more

The remarkable story behind the woman who once wore a little flowered skirt.

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Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master 

by Jourdan Anderson

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

To my Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday-School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve, and die if it comes to that, than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

P.S.—Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant, Jourdan Anderson

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“Women subway workers, N.Y.C., 1917: African American porter posed with cleaning gear”

Bain News Service, New York City, NY

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“Walker, puddler in blast furnace cast house, steel mill”

1979

David Plowden, photographer

East Chicago, Indiana

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Georgetown takes good first steps to address its ties to slavery. But more will be needed.

The school is presented with both a burden and an opportunity.