How the formerly enslaved are credited with the creation of "Memorial Day" in America

 https://www.lx.com/black-legacy/dont-overlook-memorial-days-black-southern-roots/53453/

Hampton Park, Charleston, South Carolina - a cemetary, birthplace of Decoration Day or Dedication Day, finally Memorial Day. It first took place on May 1st, 1865.

Formerly enslaved were entrusted with basically the "clean up" in the area after the Civil War. They unearthed a mass grave of Black Union soldiers and honored them properly - proper preparation of the remains for burial, the tidy alignment of individual graves and finally the re-burying of the dead with dignity. Many cities celebrated this remembrance but Charleston had them beat by about 100 years! 

This act was a way of the ex-enslaved thanking the men who'd died fighting for the Union and it also was a dig at the defeated Confederacy.. Needless to say, the custom did not sit right with white Charlestonians. They clung to the the myth of the "Lost Cause" - a re-telling of the Civil War which casts the South in the role of the loer because the North had more manpower and resources. It explained that the war happened because the North was jealous of a paradisical antebellum South. its kindly slave holders, and "happily enslaved darkies." The "Lost Cause" never mentioned the brutality of chattel slavery as a cause for the Civil War. The theory is a doozy - https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause

Anyhoo, the origins of Memorial Day are not discussed even today. One must research it to discover the true origins.

Whatevs.

Today, I salute 3 of my uncles who served in WW2, and my father and 1 aunt who were in the Navy.

Happy Memorial Day and thank you.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WARRIOR!

                                May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965

The man

The myth

The legend

6' 3", @180 lbs. of determination

Malik el-Shabazz  (Malcolm X)

Happy Solar Return!

The Buffalo Shooter and the Great Replacement lie that kills!

ALERT! This post will be all over the place because my heart is in one place - with my people.

    The Buffalo shooter's victims

Well, here we go again!

Thoughts and prayers. 

Candlelight vigils. 

White reporters, microphones at the ready, hoping the stunned Black folks they are interviewing will utter how we "all need to love one another and hug it out and get along."

Been there. Done that. Tired of the futile gestures.

Black folks don't need to forgive squat. We have turned the cheek. We have followed the adage of not figuratively blinding others because that just leaves everyone blind.

Yeah, right.

What I see are lots of Black Americans with two bruised cheeks and one eye. While others have unblemished skin and both eyes.

Figuratively. 

Gotta say that in this day and age because ANYTHING Black folks post, say or repeat is seen as "BIE" talk. That's Black Identity Extremists as coined by the FBI. It's seen as dangerous.

HA!

Make up your mind FBI! I thought the infiltration of White Supremacy ideology throughout the country was the main problem for your agency. You know. Poisoned people peppered throughout the military. The law enforcement agencies like yours. The medical field. The judicial system. The school system. On and on. I believe that with each passing shooting. Y'all got the bigger and longer record of barbarism..

Dylan. Patrick. Brenton. Kyle. Payton. A short list but Losers All. I have zero sympathy for them. They cannot leave the earth fast enough as far as I am concerned.

They are men (yes, I said "men." not boys) steeped in a culture that blew their heads up to think their kind is the end all and be all when in reality it has dominance because it is the best at stealing, cheating, lying, plundering and pillaging. Oh, and did I say killing? Can't forget that.

This reality is that the great hub-hub is about the teaching of American history in public schools. The CRT scare. Critical Race Theory. A theory about telling it like it was, and is, about America. It is only taught in law school and has been around since the 70s. NO ONE is teaching it in elementary school. NO ONE! But the mouth-breathers aren't hearing that because the sound of their breathing is drowning it out.

But I digress.

This "replacement" fear has taken hold in the most fragile folks in American society. i. e. those khaki pants-wearing, tiki torch-carrying goons who live in 4chan chatrooms. And their families. Yeah, I said it. No cretins like these bigoted shooters grow up in a vacuum. Mom, Pop, Grandpop, Grandma and countless relatives hold the same belief. America has many sins to atone for. Oh well. If it's a possibility that y'all might be replaced, you might want to take a moment and stop coasting on those fumes of unearned, so-called greatness and actually contribute something of worth besides fear, mediocrity and bloodshed before it's too late. 

But I don't think you can. That's all you know and that's what truly scares you.

P.S. I had a chance to read the latest loser's manifesto but did not dowload it. I regret that because I wanted to share it here. It has been scrubbed from the internet. How convenient. What I gleaned from it is that the dude is not crazy or sufffering from some mental illness. Not a one of them who do this are. When you plot out how you are going to pick a target, do reconnaisance days before you strike, load up on ammo and wear tactical gear...You ain't crazy. You are dangerous.