Monday Information in July 2019.

To be human is know about many things. Africa represents our humanity, since all human beings came from Africa. To truly love Africa is to not only love African people. It is about researching information about its history, culture, and important issues found in the continent. For years, more and more people are speaking up about the values that encompass African society. Many countries of Africa have modern technology, animal conservation services, and people dedicated to the premise of human liberation. We have a long way to go in establishing justice. We know of political corruption, debt issues, and the fragile nature of our ecosystem. Also, we acknowledge the huge, unsung work that unsung African heroes are doing in making sure that the future is so much better than the present. Here are some examples. Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a renowned Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. We have the young people in Sudan standing up against a military junta. We see young people in Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana fighting economic inequality, corrupt leaders, and social injustices. Therefore, Africa’s growth is beneficial to the growth of the world in general. Africa’s growing population growth is a blessing. It is excellent to witness more Africans birthed in the world. It is also important to note that African culture is diverse. There are tons of languages spoken, different types of music, and a myriad of cultural traditions spread all over the continent of Africa. Loving Africa extends into loving the African Diaspora as well. Black lives always matter. There are black people in Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia plus other places of the world fighting diligently for our freedom. Their sacrifice and strength ought to be appreciated. Africa is the Motherland indeed.


Red Summer started in the summer of 1919. It was one of the harshest chapters in American history. The time was about when tons of innocent  black people in America were murdered, assaulted, raped, and had their homes plus businesses destroyed by white racist mobs. We should remember this tragedy after 100 years. This was murder and an unjust slaughter. It was a pogrom against black people. It was caused by many factors. Over 165 people died via Red Summer. The racists were jealous of black infrastructure and had a vicious hatred of black people in general. Not only did black people died, the federal government did nothing about it. Some in the federal government like J. Edgar Hoover disgracefully blamed black people for the violence. It started from late winter of 1919 to the fall of the same year plus beyond. The destruction and bombing of Black Wall Street was part of the Red Summer era. Many of the violence existed after white racists promoted the lies that black people wanted to kill white people collectively or black men collectively were raping white women. White racist terrorists groups destroyed the lives of thousands of black people. Then, some have the nerve to say that black Americans aren’t entitled to reparations today. Many black people fought back in self-defense in places like Chicago and Washington, D.C. During that time, there was the first Great Migration where African Americans left the South to go into the North, the Midwest, and West Coast (for economic opportunities and to escape racial terrorism found in the South). Many black people found the same racism in the North as found in the South. Many black veterans competed for jobs after World War I ended. So, Northern manufacturers recruited workers in the South. About 500,000 African Americans came from the South to the North by 1919. Black people worked in factories and some were strikebreakers. Violence against black people happened in East St. Louis, Illinois and Houston, Texas by the summer of 1917. Many racists scapegoated black people during the Red Scare and made the lie that black folks calling for racial justice were being influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution (when the struggle for black freedom existed long before the Russian Revolution. Also, the Russian czars were corrupt and ought to not maintain a rule of anti-Semitism, serfdom, and corruption). Black Americans competed for housing too among whites including European immigrants. Back then, a labor shortage came about in the Northeast and Midwest. Civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson called the time Red Summer. He worked in the NAACP as a field secretary since 1916. He organized peaceful protests against the racist violence.  Dr. George Edmund Haynes, W.E.B. DuBois, and others talked about the returning black veterans as an opportunity for racial justice to be made. A. Philip Randolph from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (and a civil rights activist) defended the right of black people to use self-defense. In addition, Haynes reported that between January 1 and September 14, 1919, white mobs lynched at least forty-three African Americans, with sixteen hanged and others shot; while another eight men were burned at the stake. The states appeared powerless or unwilling to interfere or prosecute such mob murders. The NAACP requested that Woodrow Wilson do something about the violence, but he refused to do anything. 

6 people died in rural Jenkins County, Georgia in the riot of 1919 on April 13. Many black-owned properties were burned. By May 10, 1919, the Charleston, South Carolina racial riot was so bad that the city imposed martial law. U.S. Navy sailors led the race riot. Black people like Isaac Doctor and William Brown plus James Talbot were killed. 5 white men and 18 black men were injured. A Naval investigation found that 4 U.S. sailors and 1 civilian (all white men) initiated the riot. Washington, D.C. starting July 19, white men, many in the military and in uniforms of all three services, responded to the rumored arrest of a black man for rape of a white woman with four days of mob violence against black individuals and businesses. They rioted, randomly beat black people on the street, and pulled others off streetcars for attacks. When police refused to intervene, the black population fought back. The city closed saloons and theaters to discourage assemblies. Meanwhile, the four white-owned local papers, including the Washington Post, fanned the violence with incendiary headlines and calling in at least one instance for a mobilization of a "clean-up" operation. After four days of police inaction, President Woodrow Wilson mobilized the National Guard to restore order. But a violent summer rainstorm had more of a dampening effect. When the violence ended, a total of 15 people had died: 10 white people, including two police officers; and five black people. Fifty people were seriously wounded and another 100 less severely wounded. It was one of the few times in 20th-century riots of whites against blacks that white fatalities outnumbered those of black people. In Norfolk, Virginia, a white mob attacked a homecoming celebration for African-American veterans of World War I. At least six people were shot, and the local police called in Marines and Navy personnel to restore order. 

Starting July 27, the summer's greatest violence occurred during rioting in Chicago. The city's beaches along Lake Michigan were segregated by custom. Eugene Williams, a black youth, swam into an area on the South Side customarily used by whites, where he was stoned, and drowned. When the Chicago police refused to take action against the attackers, young black men responded violently. Violence between mobs and gangs of both races lasted thirteen days. White mobs were led by ethnic Irish. The resulting 38 fatalities included 23 black people and 15 whites. The injured totaled 537 and 1,000 black families were left homeless.  Other accounts reported 50 people were killed, with unofficial numbers and rumors reporting more. White mobs destroyed hundreds of mostly black homes and businesses on the South Side of Chicago; Illinois called in a militia force of seven regiments: several thousand men, to restore order. At the end of July, the Northeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, at an annual convention, denounced the rioting and burning of black Americans' homes and asked President Wilson "to use every means within your power to stop the rioting in Chicago and the propaganda used to incite such.”  At the end of August, the NAACP protested again to the White House, noting the attack on the organization's secretary in Austin, Texas the previous week.

Their telegram said: "The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People respectfully enquires how long the Federal Government under your administration intends to tolerate anarchy in the United States?" On September 30, a race riot against black people broke out in rural Elaine, Arkansas, in Phillips County. Distinctive because it occurred in the rural South rather than a city, it erupted from white minority resistance to labor organizing by black sharecroppers and fear of socialism. Black sharecroppers were meeting in the local chapter of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. Planters opposed their efforts to organize and tried to disrupt meetings. In a confrontation, a white man was fatally shot and another wounded. The planters formed a militia to arrest the African-American farmers, and hundreds of whites came from the region. They acted as a mob, attacking black people at random over two days. In the riot they killed an estimated 100 to 237 black people, and five whites also died in the violence. Racial violence against black people was in Dublin, Georgia, Philadelphia, Tuscaloosa, Bisbee, Arizona, Knoxville, Omaha, Baltimore, and elsewhere in America. Wilson did nothing but issued some token words about condemning lynching. That’s it. He issued no federal laws or executive orders. The National Equal Rights League criticized Wilson for his lax response. The African Blood Brotherhood was created in the northern cities to promote self-defense. Dr. George Edmund Haynes of October of 1919 wanted national action to stop the lynching and racial violence. The Haynes report exposed that lawlessness among white racists contributed to the violence. The aftermath of this time caused tons of African Americans to continue to fight back for black freedom. It inspired more people to continue in the freedom movement. We should never forget the unjust murder of black people. Never Forget Red Summer. Never Forget.



Maurice Bishop lived from 1944 to 1983. He was one of the most revolutionary leaders of the 20th century. He was the leader of the New Jewel Movement. He believed in pan-African unity and black liberation. He wanted education and socioeconomic development to spread in his community. He was also the second Prime Minister of Grenada. Maurice Bishop was the head of the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada from 1979 to 1983. He was born at Aruba, which was controlled by the Netherlands back then. His parents were Rupert and Elment Bishop. Aruba is just off the coast of Venezuela. He lived in Aruba until he was six. He moved to Grenada. He walked into school, and his father inspired him to make great contributions involving education. Maurice Bishop became interested in politics, history, and sociology. He supported the West Indies Federation which wanted Caribbean nationalism by 1958. He was inspired by the 1959 Cuban Revolution. In those same years Bishop and his colleagues became interested in reading the works of Julius Nyerere and Frantz Fanon. In 1962, Bishop graduated with a gold medal for his outstanding ability. By December 1963, he studied law at the University of London when he was 19 years old. In 1963–66, Bishop was president of the Students Association of Holborn College and in 1967 headed the association of students of the Royal College. While studying Grenada history, Bishop focused on the head of the uprising in 1795, Julien Fédon, and other anti-British speeches. In 1964, he participated the UK's West Indian Standing Conference (WISC) and Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD). He traveled from the UK to socialist Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic.
During that time, he studied the works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong. Yet, he was impressed by Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism (published by Oxford University Press in 1968) and the Arusha Declaration of 1967. He earned his law degree and worked in Grenada. He wanted to work in Grenada to gain political power. He gave legal defense to striking nurses at St. George’s General Hospital. He wanted patients’ lives to be better. He protested and was arrested, but all were acquitted after a seven month trial. In 1972, he helped organize a conference in Martinique that discussed and strategized actions for liberation movements. The philosophy of Julius Nyerere and Tanzanian socialism would be guiding elements for the Movement for Assemblies of the People (MAP) which Bishop helped organize after the elections of 1972. He along with Kenrick Radix and Jacqueline Creft, were interested in steering MAP toward construction of popular institutions centered in villages, to facilitate broad participation in the country’s affairs.

Bishop was beaten by the security forces under Chief Constable Aynesent Belmar. In 1974, Bishop’s father was shot after he lead women and children aware from Gairy supporters’ bottles. Bishop worked in the Pan African Congress. In 1979, he staged a revolution. Eric Gairy was a corrupt, imperialist person. Gairy was gone, and Bishop was the Prime Minister of Grenada. He could communicate brilliantly about empathy for the people of Grenada. Maurice Bishop built infrastructure. He wanted women’s rights, workers’ rights, ending racism, and ending apartheid. Reagan hated Bishop and organized a coup. Under Bishop's leadership, the National Women’s Organization was formed which participated in policy decisions along with other social groups. Women were given equal pay and paid maternity leave, and sex discrimination was made illegal. Organisations for education (Center for Popular Education), health care, and youth affairs (National Youth Organization) were also established. Bishop introduced free public health; illiteracy dropped from 35% to 5% and unemployment from 50% to 14%. But its weak point was tourism. Bishop was not without imperfections. Many in the PRA or the People’s Revolutionary Army violated human rights, and Bishop was hesitant to promote further elections for fear of outside interference. Ironically, it would be four members of the PRA that would kill him. Then, Reagan launched an invasion. His wife was Angela Redhead. They had 2 children. He had another son that was murdered at the age of 16. On May 29, 2009, Grenada's international airport (formerly Point Salines International Airport) was renamed Maurice Bishop International Airport. Speaking at the ceremony, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said: "This belated honour to an outstanding Caribbean son will bring closure to a chapter of denial in Grenada’s history." Maurice Bishop’s gift was that he combined intellectual power with humility in wanting justice for his people. He never wavered in his commitment to justice, and he gave his life in service to fight imperialism. Rest in Power Brother Maurice Bishop.

Virginian history between World War 1 and the end of World War 2 was long. By 1912, Norfolk Terminal Station or a railway station was opened in Downtown Norfolk. Booker T. Washington and Maury high schools opened in 1911. Huntersville and Lambert’s Park became part of Norfolk in 1911. In 1917, the Norfolk Naval Station opened. A Norfolk local NAACP branch was established in 1917. During the early 20th century, many people believed in temperance (or banning alcohol drinking). By 1916, the state banned the sale and drinking of alcohol via referendum. This was overturned by 1933. The Attucks Theater opened in the Norfolk, Virginia city by 1919 as the “Apollo Theater of the South.” Virginia Beach opened in 1921 as its oceanfront was developed. NorVA Theater opened in 1922. The Nansemond Hotel opened in 1928. It was destroyed by fire in 1980. Colonial Williamsburg was formed in 1930 that increased tourism in the state. The Shenandoah National Park was created from newly gathered land. There was the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Skyline Drive. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) developed the National Park including Pocahontas State Park. New highway bridges crossed the lower Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers. This ended the steamboat service. Transportation across the Chesapeake Bay area improved. Ferryboats continue today, but they rarely exist now. The Byrd machine was one of the most powerful political machines in American history. Back then, racism was shown in lynching, discrimination, Jim Crow, voter suppression, housing deprivation, and other evil policies. The Byrd Machine promoted racial segregation and the status quo. Black people in Virginia back then were a third of the population, but they had nearly no political power. The electorate was small. The Byrd machine lasted from 1887 to 1966. Many people supported the right to vote. Others didn’t. It would be until the 1960’s that federal civil rights legislation would be passed in 1964 and in 1965. Foreman Field at ODU was created in 1936. The Norfolk Municipal Airport and Norfolk Azealia Garden opened in 1938. By 1939, Granby High School opened. The Edgar Allan Poe Museum opened in 1922. That is in Richmond, Virginia. In 1928, the Virginia World War I Memorial Carillon was created in 1928. From June 27 to July 2, 1939, Richmond hosted the 30th annual conference of the NAACP at the location called The Mosque.  Mayor John Fulmer Bright welcomed them. Richmond’s NAACP President Jesse M. Tinsley and keynote addressed were made by William H. Hastle and Sam Colomon. The conference had a in person appearance by Eleanor Roosevelt presenting the Spingarn Medal to Marian Anderson as it was broadcast over NBC and CBS stations. 

World War II transformed Virginia in many ways. The economic stimulus of World War II brought full employment for workers, high wages, and high profits for farmers. Virginia sent 300,000 men and 4,000 women to the Armed services during World War II; Virginia expanded its industrial and naval economic power. Northern Virginia is the site of the Pentagon (at Arlington, Virginia). In 1941, Fort A. P. Hill and Fort Pickett opened. Fort Lee was reactivated. The Newport News shipyard expanded its labor force from 17,000 to 70,000 in 1943. This was when the Radford Arsenal had 22,000 workers making explosives. Turnover was very high in one three month period the Newport News shipyard hired 8,400 new workers as 8,300 others quit.

By Timothy