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The
Importation of Slaves Is Prohibited, 1808
Be it enacted by the
Senate and House of Representatives of the United Stoles of
America io Cmzgress assembled, That from and after the first day
of January, one thousand eight hundred and eight, it shall not
be lawful to import or bring into the United States or the
territories tbereof from any foreign kingdom, place, or country,
any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, with intent to hold,
sell, or dispose of such negro, mulatto, or person of colour, as
a slave, or to be held to service or labour.
Sec. 2. And be it
further enacted, That no citizen or citizens of the United
States, or any other person, shall, from and after the first day
of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and eight, for himself, or themselves, or any other person
whatsoever, either as master, factor, or owner, build, fit,
equip, load or otherwise prepare any ship or vessel, in any port
or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, nor shall
cause any ship or vessel to sail from any port or place within
the same, for the purpose of procuring any negro, mulatto, or
person of colour, from any foreign kingdom, place, or country,
to be transported to any port or place whatsoever, within the
jurisdiction of the United States, to be held, sold, or disposed
of as slaves, or to be held to service or labour; and if any
ship or vessel shall be so fitted out for the purpose aforesaid,
or shall be caused to sail so as aforesaid, every such ship or
vessel, her tackle, apparel, and furniture, shall be forfeited
to the United States, and shall be liable to be seized,
prosecuted, and condemned in any of the circuit courts or
district courts, for the district where the said ship or vessel
may be found or seized.
U.S. Statute; At Large, II, p. 426
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A Negro Teacher and
Preacher Announces the Opening of His School in Raleigh, North
Carolina,
in which He Taught Both White and Negro Students, 1808
John Chaves takes this
method of informing his Employers, and the Citizens of Raleigh
in general, that the present Quarter of his School will end the
i5th of September, and the next will commence on the I9th. He
will, at the same time, open an Evening School for the purpose
of instructing Children of Colour, as he intends, for the
accommodation of some of his employers, to exclude all Children
of Colour from his Day School. The Evening School will commence
at an hour by Sun. When the white children leave the House,
those of colour will take their places, and continue until ten
o'clock.
The terms of teaching
the white children will be as usual, two and a half dollars per
quarter; these of colour, one dollar and three quarters. In both
cases, the whole of the money to be paid in advance to Mr.
Benjamin S. King. Those who produce Certificates from him of
their having paid the money, will be admitted.
Those who think proper
to put their Children under his care, may rely upon the
strictest attention being paid, not only to their Education but
to their Morals, which he deems an important part of Education.
Aug.23, 1808.
He hopes to have a
better School House by the commencement of the next quarter.
The Raleigh Register,
August 20, 1808.
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Sources:
Chapter VI. "The Instruction of Negroes." In Edgar W.
Knight..
A Documentary History of Education in the South before 1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 1953
Chapter 10 "Up From Slavery: Educational and
other Rights of Negroes." In Edgar W. Knight and Clifton L. Hall. Readings
in American Educational History. New York Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Inc., 1951. Many states had laws prohibiting
the education of blacks; here black youngsters are turned away at the
school door |
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The Last Holiday: A Memoir
By Gil Scott Heron
Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng, Guardian |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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