ChickenBones: A Journal

for  Literary & Artistic African-American  Themes

    

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Emily Blake, born a slave, was the mother  of musician, composer, performer Eubie Blake, whose parents

were both freed slaves. His father  worked as a stevedore on the Baltimore docks. Emily, his mother took

in washing to earn a few dollars. To supplement the family income, Eubie the teenager born in 1883

in Baltimore, Maryland sneaked out of the house every night to play piano at a bordello
 

 

A Poetic Response to the Beauty & Endurance of Black Women

The Washer-Woman

By Otto Leland Bohanan

A great swart cheek and the gleam of tears,

The flutter of hopes and the shadow of fears,

And all day long the rub and scrub

With only a breath betwixt tub and tub.

Fool! Thou hast toiled for fifty years

And what hast thou now but thy dusty tears?

In silence she rubbed . . . But her face I had seen,

Where the light of her soul fell shining and clean.

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Otto Leland Bohanon was born in Washington, D.C. and educated in the public schools in Washington. He is a graduate of Howard University, School of Liberal Arts, Washington, D.C., and did special work in English at the Catholic University in that city. He was also engaged in the musical profession in New York.

Source: The Book of American Negro Poetry Chosen and Edited with an Essay on The Negro's Creative Genius By James Weldon Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922 

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Audio: My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)

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Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (2009)

By David Waldstreicher

Taking on decades of received wisdom, David Waldstreicher has written the first book to recognize slavery’s place at the heart of the U.S. Constitution. Famously, the Constitution never mentions slavery. And yet, of its eighty-four clauses, six were directly concerned with slaves and the interests of their owners. Five other clauses had implications for slavery that were considered and debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the citizens of the states during ratification. This “peculiar institution” was not a moral blind spot for America’s otherwise enlightened framers, nor was it the expression of a mere economic interest. Slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery.By tracing slavery from before the revolution, through the Constitution’s framing, and into the public debate that followed, Waldstreicher rigorously shows that slavery was not only actively discussed behind the closed and locked doors of the Constitutional Convention, but that it was also deftly woven into the Constitution itself.

For one thing, slavery was central to the American economy, and since the document set the stage for a national economy, the Constitution could not avoid having implications for slavery. Even more, since the government defined sovereignty over individuals, as well as property in them, discussion of sovereignty led directly to debate over slavery’s place in the new republic.

Finding meaning in silences that have long been ignored, Slavery’s Constitution is a vital and sorely needed contribution to the conversation about the origins, impact, and meaning of our nation’s founding document.

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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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Negro Digest / Black World

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Enjoy!

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

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posted 22 June 2008

 

 

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