Culture and History.

 

Afro-Cubans include dynamic black people filled with culture, strength, and massive contributions in the world. Many of them are heavily of Yoruba and other human beings of West African descent. They are over 1 million Afro-Cuban people in terms of population. They speak Spanish, Lucumi, Hable Congo, English, Portuguese, and other languages. We know of their contributions in music, language, literature, religion, and other forms of human culture. Many Afro-Cubans are related to other African ethnic groups like the Akan, Arara, Kongo, Igbo, Carabali, Mandingo, Kissi, Fula, Makua, etc. Many Afro-Cubans are recent immigrants from Angola, Haiti, and Jamaica. Most Afro-Cubans live in Eastern Cuba, Havana, etc. Many Afro-Cubans came into America, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. There has been a growth of the Afro-Cuban population since the 1959 Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro. Many ex-slaves from Cuba came into Nigeria and Spanish Guinea centuries ago. Ironically, Angola has communities of Afro-Cubans, Amparos, and others who helped to cause Angola to gain its rightful independence. Fidel Castro deployed thousands of troops to Angola during the Angolan Civil War. Obviously, Fidel Castro passed away many years ago. Haitian Cubans came into Cuba from Haiti since the start of the 19th century. Many of them spread a Creole language. Many Afro-Cubans follow Santeria, Palo Monte, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, etc. Music is diverse in Cuba. Afro-Cubans have utilized son, songa, mambo, chachacha, and hip hop. The music of Afro-Cubans has European, Cuban Spanish, and sub-Saharan African elements.  

Genres like Nueva Trova are seen as live representations of the revolution and have been affected by Afro-Cuban musicians like Pablo Milanes who included African spirituals in his early repertory. Music in Cuba is encouraged both as a scholarly exercise and a popular enjoyment. To Cubans, music and study of it are integral parts of the revolution. Audiences are proud of mixed ethnicity that makes up the music from the Afro-Cuban community, despite there being a boundary of distrust and uncertainty between Cubans and Afro-Cuban culture. Before the Revolution, Afro-Cuban music was suppressed. Afterwards, Afro-Cuban music was shown more openly. Racism exists in Cuba to this day. Afro-Cubans are excluded from positions in tourism related jobs. Many Afro-Cubans lack managerial positions in jobs. Fidel Castro spoke out against racism on March 23, 1959, but racial discrimination is still a serious problem in Cuba to this day. 

During the 1920s and 1930s Cuba experienced a movement geared towards Afro-Cuban culture called Afrocubanismo. The movement had a large impact on Cuban literature, poetry, painting, music, and sculpture. It was the first artistic campaign in Cuba that focused on one particular theme: African culture. Specifically, it highlighted the struggle for independence from Spain, African slavery, and building a purely Cuban national identity. Its goal was to incorporate African folklore and rhythm into traditional modes of art. Many Afro-Cubans worked with African Americans too. Afro-Cuban heritage artists such as Nicolás Guillén, Alberto Arredondo and Emilio Ballagas brought light to the once-marginalized African race and culture. It became a symbol of empowerment and individuality for Afro-Cubans within the established Western culture of the Americas. 

Black slaves came into Cuban society in 1513. The Cedula Real, passed in 1526, granted legal importation of slaves to Cuba. By 1532, black people formed 62.5% of the Cuban population. Many black slaves would form cabildos based on ethnic groups in 1568. Some of them included groups of human beings like the Yoruba, Araar, Minas, Kongo, etc. A freed black population in Cuba existed. Some freed people couldn't move freely, some couldn't earn an independent living, and other rights were limited. Later, freed black people gained some rights. Cuba experienced numerous slave revolts. The first recorded slave revolts occurred in 1533 in Bayamo. Four slaves fought Spanish soldiers to the death. To alleviate, colonist fear, their decapitated heads were put on public display. The period of 1790-1796, during the Haitian Revolution, the black population agitated for freedom. Slave importation ceased during that period. The Haitian Revolution made the Cuban planters paranoid. They were in constant fear of black people taking over Cuba and began to ran their plantation like prison camps with watchtowers stationed everywhere. Spanish planters wanted the status quo. In 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes declared Cuban independence and slavery abolish in Cuba, known as Grito de Yara. Cuba didn't completely end slavery until 1886. Cuba was occupied by America too during the 20th century. Many racist Cuban elitists tried to decrease the black population in Cuba via blanquaemiento. Afro-Disaporic linkages between Afro-Cubans and African Americans are further documented by Caribbean Historian Frank Andrew Guirdy, Associate Professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of the book entitled, "Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow" (Chapell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). Both communities of African Americans worked together and experienced raicsm plus discrimination (then and now). 

Observing acts of marginalisation, Afro-Cubans reacted by forming their own political party, the Partido Independiente de Color, in 1910, comprising of prominent members of the Cuban Liberation Army. The repression of the party began quickly by the Cuban government, first passing laws banning parties based on race. The Cuban elite began a mass campaign against the party accusing it of trying to bring about a Haitian style Cuba. Repression of black people became widespread, like the purging of black people from the security apparatus and the harassment of black organization not affiliated with the Partido Independiente de Color. All the political persecution culminated in the mass slaughtering of members of the Partido Independiente de Color, in 1912, "The Little Black War."  Vigilante groups were formed, headed by José Francisco Martí, son of Jose Marti, executing leaders of the Partido Independiente de Color. A total of 12,000 member died in the pogrom. The US military aided by garrisoning about 26 town, while the vigilante groups engaged in its killing spree. Afro Cuban Sister Nancy Morejon was born in Havana in 1944. She is an eassyist, a critic, and a famous poet. Her literature mentions the black people of Cuba, the advocacy of gender equality, and the fight for human rights. She has won many awards too. Some hypocritically criticized Castro alone (Castro was right to improve health care, literacy, and other services in Cuba. Castro was wrong to have human rights issues and the suppression of human liberties in Cuba), while praising Batista (who was a dictator in Cuba funded by Western capitalists, and Mafia leaders). Sister Gloria Rolando is an activist and filmmaker. Afro-Cuban human rights activist Sister Gisela Arandia is well known in Cuba. 

In our generation (and in previous generations), tons of Afro-Cubans are known like Laz Alonzo, Lola Falana, Sara Gomez, Nicolas Gullen, Juan Gualberto Gomez, Gina Torres, Jose Contreeras, Yoel Romero, Soledad O'Brien, Regla Torres, Yarisely Silva (who is a famous Afro-Cuban professional pole vaulter), Celia Cruz, Sammy Davis Jr., Matt Cedeno, and other human beings. 

Benjmain Harrison (who lived from August 20, 1833 to March 13, 1901) was the 23rd President of the University of America from 1889 tro 1893. He was the grandson of the ninths President, William Henry Harrison, and a great grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Founder who signed the United States Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Harrison V succeeded Thomas Nelson Jr. as Governor of Virginia. Benjamin Harrison was born on August 20, 1833 in North Bend, Ohio. He was the second child of Elizabeth Ramsey (Irwin) and John Scott Harrison's ten children. His paternal ancestors were Harrison family of Virginia, whose immigrant ancestor, Benjamin Harrison, arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in ca. 1630 from England. Harrison was of English ancestry. All of his ancestors have emigrated to America during the early colonial period. Harrison's family was not wealthy but distinguished. John Scott Harrison would spent much of his farm income on his children's education. Benjamin Harrison loved the outdoors doing fishing and hunting. He was educated in a log cabin near his name. A tutor educated him to prepare for college studies. Fourteen-year-old Benjamin and his older brother, Irwin, enrolled in Farmer's College near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1847. He attended the college for two years and while there met his future wife, Caroline "Carrie" Lavinia Scott, a daughter of John Witherspoon Scott, the school's science professor, who was also a Presbyterian minister.

Harrison transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1850, and graduated in 1852. He joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he used as a network for much of his life. He was also a member of Delta Chi, a law fraternity that permitted dual membership. Classmates included John Alexander Anderson, who became a six-term U.S. congressman, and Whitelaw Reid, Harrison's vice-presidential running mate in 1892. At Miami, Harrison was strongly influenced by history and political economy professor Robert Hamilton Bishop. He also joined a Presbyterian church at college and, like his mother, became a lifelong Presbyterian. After Harrison graduated from college, he studied law with Bellamy Storer of Cincinnati. He came to Oxford, Ohio to marry Carolina Scotton October 20, 1853. Caroline's father was a Presbyterian minister, who performed the ceremony. Their 2 children are Russell Benjamin Harrison and Mary Scott Harrison. Harrison and his wife returned to live at The Point, his father's farm in southwestern Ohio, while he finished his law studies. Harrison was admitted to the Ohio bar in early 1854, the same year he sold property that he had inherited after the death of an aunt for $800 (equivalent to $23,043 in 2020) and used the funds to move with Caroline to Indianapolis, Indiana. Harrison worked in the law office of John H. Ray in 1854. He worked as a Commissioner for the U.S. Court of Claims. He was a Whig and later joined the Republican Party. He campaigned for Republican Presidential candidate John C. Fremont. In 1857, Harrison was elected Indianapolis city attorney, a positiion that paid an annual salary of $400. In 1860, he was elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. Harrison was an active supporter of the Republican Party's platform and served as Republican State Committee's secretary. After Wallace, his law partner, was elected county clerk in 1860, Harrison established a new firm with William Fishback, Fishback and Harrison. The new partners worked together until Harrison entered the Union Army after the start of the American Civil War.

By 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued more calls for more recruits in the Union Army. Harrison wanted to enlist, but he worried about how to support his young family. Harrison recruited many in northern Indiana to raise a regiment. He was a colonel in the 70th Indiana and moved to join the Union Army at Louisville, Kentucky. They built railroads and did reconnaissance duty in Kentucky and Tennessee. By 1864, he joined William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign and moved to the front lines. On January 2, 1864, Harrison was promoted to command the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the XX Corps. He commanded the brigade at the battles of Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta, Peachtree Creek, and Atlanta. When Sherman's main force began its March to the Sea, Harrison's brigade was transferred to the District of Etowah and participated in the Battle of Nashville. On January 23, 1865, Lincoln nominated Harrison to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers, to rank from that date, and the Senate confirmed the nomination on February 14, 1865. He rode in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. before mustering out on June 8, 1865. After the war, Harrison was the reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. He supported Republicans in speeches constantly. Later, he campaigned on economic policy and wanted to deflate the national currency. He lived udring the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He supported management to end the crisis among strikers. Benjamin Harrison fought hard to be Senator of Indiana. He served in the Senate from March 4 1881 to March 3, 1887. He chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seabord (47th Congress), and the U.S. Senate Committee on Territories (48th and 49th Congresses). 

In 1881, the major issue confronting Senator Harrison was the budget surplus. Democrats wanted to reduce the tariff and limit the amount of money the government took in; Republicans instead wanted to spend the money on internal improvements and pensions for Civil War veterans. Harrison took his party's side and advocated for generous pensions for veterans and their widows. He also unsuccessfully supported aid for the education of Southerners, especially children of the freedmen; he believed that education was necessary to help the black population rise to political and economic equality with whites. Harrison opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which his party supported, because he thought it violated existing treaties with China. He failed to get new western states admitted to the Union, as some feared that the new states would elect Republicans to Congress. Harrison returned to Indianapolis after he left the Senate. Democrats had a majority of the state legislature by this time via gerrymandering districts. Benjamin Harrison ran for President in 1888. Blaine supporters shifted their support for Harrison. Benjamin Harrison ran the race against incumbent President Grover Cleveland. Harrison supported protective tariff to gain votes. He focused on Indiana, New Jersey, Connecticut, and other industrial states. Harrison won by winning the Electoral College, but he had 90,000 fewer popular votes than Cleveland. Harrison was known as the Centennial President because his inauguration celebrated the centenary of the first inauguration of George Washington in 1789. In the congressional elections, Republicans increased their membership in the House of Representatives by 19 seats. 

Benjamin Harrison was sworn into office on Monday, March 4, 1889 by Chief Justice Melville Fuller. He gave a short speech. Harrison wanted further growth of America and believed in the imperialistic Monroe Doctrine. He wanted the modernization of the Navy and a merchant marine force. He wanted international peace via noninterference in the affairs of foreign governments. Harrison acted quite independently in selecting his cabinet, much to the Republican bosses' dismay. He began by delaying the presumed nomination of James G. Blaine as Secretary of State so as to preclude Blaine's involvement in the formation of the administration, as had occurred in President Garfield's term. Harrison rejected patronage. In June 1890, Harrison's Postmaster General John Wanamaker and several Philadelphia friends purchased a large new cottage at Cape May Point for Harrison's wife, Caroline. Many believed the cottage gift appeared improper and amounted to a bribe for a cabinet position. Harrison made no comment on the matter for two weeks, then said he had always intended to purchase the cottage once Caroline approved. On July 2, perhaps a little tardily to avoid suspicion, Harrison gave Wanamaker a check for $10,000 (equivalent to $288,037 in 2020) for the cottage. The Dependent and Disability Pension Act was passed in 1890. He supported the law. 

Harrison attempted to make the tariff more acceptable by urging Congress to add reciprocity provisions, which would allow the president to reduce rates when other countries reduced their rates on American exports. The tariff was removed from imported raw sugar, and sugar growers in the United States were given a two cent per pound subsidy on their production. Even with the reductions and reciprocity, the McKinley Tariff enacted the highest average rate in American history, and the spending associated with it contributed to the reputation of the Billion-Dollar Congress. Harrison signed the Sherman Antitrust Act ot deal with trusts and monopolies via federal governmental power. He didn't enforced it a lot though. Western Republicans and southern Democrats wanted the free coinage of silver, and northeast  people wanted the gold standard. Because silver was worth less than its legal equivalent in gold, taxpayers paid their government bills in silver, while international creditors demanded payment in gold, resulting in a depletion of the nation's gold supply. Owing to worldwide deflation in the late 19th century, however, a strict gold standard had resulted in reduction of incomes without the equivalent reduction in debts, pushing debtors and the poor to call for silver coinage as an inflationary measure. Harrison wanted a free coinage of silver but at its own value not at a fixed ratio to gold. He failed to make a compromise. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act depleted the nation's gold supply that would continue until the Cleveland administration resolved it. 

After regaining the majority in both Houses of Congress, some Republicans, led by Harrison, attempted to pass legislation to protect black Americans' civil rights. Harrison's Attorney General, William H. H. Miller, through the Justice Department, ordered the prosecutions for violation of voting rights in the South; however, white juries often failed to convict or indict violators. This prompted Harrison to urge Congress to pass legislation that would "secure all our people a free exercise of the right of suffrage and every other civil right under the Constitution and laws." Harrison supported the Federal Elections Bill (written by Representative Henry Cabot Lodge and Senator George Frisbie Hoar) in 1890, but the bill was defeated in the Senate. Harrison spoke in favor of civil rights for African Americans. He gave an address to Congress on December 1889 and said that, "The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us; they were brought here in chains and held in communities where they are now chiefly bound by a cruel slave code...when and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law? When is that quality of influence which our form of government was intended to secure to the electors to be restored? … in many parts of our country where the colored population is large the people of that race are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights and of many of their civil rights. The wrong does not expend itself upon those whose votes are suppressed. Every constituency in the Union is wronged." Harrison supported a bill proposed by Senator Henry W. Blair, which would have granted federal funding to schools regardless of the students' races. He also endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) that declared much of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. None of these measures gained congressional approval.

 

Harrison signed the Land Revision Act of 1891 that promoted national forests. He lived during the Ghost Dance movement of the Lakota Sioux. On December 29, 1890, troops from the Seventh Cavalry clashed with the Sioux at Wounded Knee. The result was a massacre of at least 146 Sioux, including many women and children; the dead Sioux were buried in a mass grave. The Ghost Dance was a spiritual movement. Harrison wanted an investigation and ordered 3,500 troops to South Dakota. The uprising ended. Harrison believed in the false premise that Native Americans must assimilate into white society. This policy was part of the allotment system and the Dawes Act. This plan failed as white speculators gotten more Native Americans' land at low prices. Harrison wanted to modernize the navy and military technology. Electricity light switches were in the White House during Harrison's time. On another front, Harrison sent Frederick Douglass as ambassador to Haiti, but failed in his attempts to establish a naval base there. Harrison made trade deals with many nations. Europeans nations had an embargo of U.S. pork, and it would take time for it to end. He prevented war against Chile. In the last days of his administration, Harrison dealt with the issue of Hawaiian annexation. Following a coup d'état against Queen Liliuokalani, the new government of Hawaii led by Sanford Dole petitioned for annexation by the United States. Harrison wanted to annex Hawaii to advance American imperialism. He appointed many people on the Supreme Court and other cabinet positions. He saw North Daoka, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming admitted to the Union. Love of travel was part of his life. His reelection campaign came in 1892. 

The Panic of 1893 crippled the nation. Harison saw many Republicans refusing to support him. Cleveland would defeat him. Harrison also lost by many western Republican voters joining the Populist Party candidate James Weaver who wanted free silver, veterans' pensions, and a 8 hour work day. Harrison's wife passed way from tuberculosis. After he left office, Harrison visited the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in June 1893. After the Expo, Harrison returned to his home in Indianapolis. Harrison had been elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in 1882 and was elected as commander (president) of the Ohio Commandery on May 3, 1893. For a few months in 1894, Harrison lived in San Francisco, California, where he gave law lectures at Stanford University. Some wanted him to run for President again, but he came about to support William McKinley for President. He was in Purdue University as a Board of Trustees from July 1895 to March 1901. He remarried to 37 year old Mary Scott Lord Dimmick and had one child together named Elizabeth. His 2 adult children disapproved of the marriage. He was an active member of the Presbyterian Church. He passed away from pneumonia at his home on March 13, 1901 at the age of 67.  His last words were reported to be, "Are the doctors here? Doctor, my lungs...". Harrison's remains are interred in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery, next to the remains of his first wife, Caroline. After her death in 1948, Mary Dimmick Harrison, his second wife, was buried beside him. President Benjamin Harrison was an innovative President dealing with antitrust, monetary policy, and tariffs. He developed the Navy, but he promoted the illogical view of the Monroe Doctrine. He had his progressive moments of supporting African American voting rights, supporting generous Civil War pensions, and being for other policies. He was the last of an era, and he existed in the start of the new era in preparation of the 20th century. 

By Timothy