What Happens When Black Success Threatens White Mediocrity
Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart were Black men who co-owned the very successful People’s Grocery store outside of Memphis, TN in the 1890s.
Their success made William Barrett, a white grocery owner, upset at having fair competition. So he found an excuse to get rid of them for good.
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When two young boys - one Black, one white - got in a small fight near People’s, it caused a scene. Soon, adults entered the scuffle and the fight grew along racial lines.
Barrett used this opportunity to spread the lie that the Black townspeople were organizing to incite a race war! In response, an armed white mob, which included police deputies, formed and surrounded People's Grocery.
A firefight ensued. The next day, more than 100 Black people were arrested. But the mob still wanted blood, and with the support of the local authorities, they stormed the jail, removed Moss, McDowell, and Stewart, and ruthlessly murdered them.
The police then allowed the mob to loot and destroy the store.
White people, used to having it easy when Black people were systematically denied opportunity, often get real salty when they have to actually compete on a level playing field.
While lynchings are mostly a thing of the past, we all know that unfortunately not much else has changed.
If you have ever attended a Black wedding, you likely witnessed the couple “jump the broom” towards the end of the ceremony. This tradition dates back to the 1600s in Ghana, and the broom symbolizes sweeping away the past and casting out evil spirits that could harm the new marriage.
In Ashanti culture in Ghana, couples did not originally jump over the broom. Instead, a religious leader waved the broom over the couples’ heads to fend off spirits. Participating in the ritual meant different things for the wife and the husband: the wife committed to keeping the couple’s new home tidy and the husband promised to be a firm decision maker in the household.
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It is blatantly false to think that jumping the broom started during American slavery. This is a gross misconception that erases the true history of this beautiful African tradition. The first people to jump the broom in America were displaced Africans who wanted to honor their culture and heritage.
Another problematic misinterpretation of jumping the broom is that it denotes “a leap of faith,” which undermines the sanctity of Black marriages. Jumping the broom is a way to connect with ancestors, join two families, and pay homage to African traditions.
Now, at the same time, jumping the broom did evolve when it became a practice of enslaved Black people. During slavery, vows exchanged between enslaved Black people were illegal and did not constitute an official marriage. For that reason, jumping the broom became a legal and binding way to legitimate the union between two enslaved people.
Unlike today’s wedding ceremonies with rings and marriage contracts, enslaved Black people believed that by jumping the broom, God witnessed the act and confirmed the sacred bond. Specifically, the straws of the broom represented the new family, the handle symbolized God, and the decorative ribbons tie the couple to the spiritual world.
If you haven’t seen Jumping The Broom, starring Angela Bassett and Paula Patton about a couple’s struggle to decide whether or not to include the sacred ritual in their wedding ceremony, check it out here.
We’ll never forget Oscar Grant, the young man who was killed by a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officer in 2009. His murder not only shocked and angered Black America, but the world. We never got any real justice, but now, a decade later, new information is reopening this wound in the WORST way.
California’s new transparency law, SB 1421, has brought a buried internal report by BART to light.
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According to the report, Officer Anthony Pirone, who was on the scene, called Grant a “n*gger,” senselessly punched him, and LIED about everything to investigators.
That’s just the beginning.
Officer Mehserle - the cop who killed Oscar - KNEW what he was doing and investigators knew too.
Contradicting Mehserle’s defense that he meant to pull his taser, the report exposes that, 10 years ago, investigators said Officer Mehserle attempted to pull his GUN twice, based on enhanced video evidence. He even looked directly at his gun holster.
BART and the police force DEFENDED Johannes Mehserle, fully aware Oscar Grant’s killing was a racist execution. And for his involuntary manslaughter conviction, Mehserle didn’t even serve a full year in prison!
We’re glad this new information has come to light, but it’s still heartbreaking. Oscar should be with his family and the officers who did this should have been held responsible.
Unfortunately, the anti-Black criminal justice system is in their favor - not ours.
When it comes to mass incarceration, too many of us know its painful impact. Most of the imprisoned are from neglected communities that the government should support with more resources rather than punish with more prisons.
Meet Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a geography professor at The City University of New York, who has worked with the likes of Angela Davis for more than 30 years to abolish prisons…
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Gilmore has been at the forefront of the prison abolition movement, with other Black women leaders like Angela Davis. In fact, in the late 1990s, the two organized with folks on the ground to stop the construction of new prisons and close existing ones.
“Historically, Black feminists have had visions to change the structure of society in ways that would benefit not just black women but everyone,” says Angela Davis.
At the end of the day, abolitionists want a better society, where the government provides support and resources, like jobs, healthcare, and housing, instead of prisons and jails.
Prison abolition is about shifting our mindset and imagining new ways to rehabilitate without punishment. So, let's fight for a society in which our communities are healthy and prisons are no longer needed!
By 14-years-old, a young Tiger Woods had already won 5 Junior World Championship Titles… and experienced plenty of discrimination along the way.
Despite the hate, a bigger dream was pushing him to succeed, as he shared in a 1990 interview.
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In that interview with Trans World Sports, a baby Tiger expressed why his biggest ambition was to win the Masters:
“The way Blacks have been treated there, [like] they shouldn’t be there… if I win that tournament it would be really big for us.”
From that point forward, Tiger Woods went on to rule the world of golf.
When Woods began golfing professionally, he immediately changed the landscape of a sport dominated by white men.
And over the course of his decades-long career, Woods has broken countless records.
To name a few, he’s won 81 PGA Tours with the best career scoring average in PGA Tour history.
He became the youngest player to win the Masters at 21.
He’s the only player to have won all four professional major championships back-to-back, a feat now called the “Tiger Slam.”
And he’s led the PGA Money List a record 10 times - the highest paid golfer in history.
Opportunities don’t come easily to us - we often have to create our own.
But when we grab opportunities, we go beyond doing well. We dominate in any field we enter.
The average 10-year old is preoccupied with toys and games, but Sarah Rector was far from average -- she was a millionaire. Yes, you read that correctly. Sarah Rector, born in 1902, was “the richest Colored girl in the world,” a decade before Madam C.J. Walker would amass her own wealth.
When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the Dawes Allotment Act divided the rocky lands among Native Americans and formerly enslaved Blacks. Each member of the Rector family was granted an allotment of around 160 acres individually, but little did they know Sarah’s share, originally valued at $556.60 would earn her a fortune.
In order to avoid having to pay the yearly income tax on the land, Sarah’s father helped her lease it to an oil company. Within days, the driller uncovered a massive oil supply that pumped over 2,500 barrels per day which in turn paid Sarah $300 per day. As the value of her land went up, she eventually made north of $15,000 per month.
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At this point, it was nearly impossible to keep her identity concealed. Many whites were flabbergasted at the fact that a Black person could be so wealthy. One group even proposed a law to get her race legally changed to white.
The press slandered her family by purporting that they were incapable of managing this amount of money and insisted that a white man be her financial advisor. Sarah avoided having her money stolen or swindled under her nose by purchasing stocks, bonds, several properties, and a bakery.
Not only did prominent Black leaders such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois catch wind of Sarah’s unbelievable story, she also had men from overseas sending her marriage proposals and countless family members begging for loans.
Despite these pressures, Sarah attended Tuskegee University and lived lavishly with her family up until her death in 1967.
Sarah Rector and other land-owning children were seen as a threat to the racial hierarchy because they would be entitled to full citizenship when they reached age 18. This peculiar situation only existed in the West where access to oil and land gave children hope and symbolized an end to their dependence on white folks.
If you'd like to learn more about Sarah Rector, pick up a copy of "Searching For Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl In America."
Lacking the financial means or legal representation to fight a dispute with a neighbor in Uganda’s High Court, Jordan Kinyera’s father lost the land he had hoped to pass down for generations.
Kinyera grew up knowing that the battle was unfair - and decided he was going to take on the fight.
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He obtained the necessary 18 years of education and professional training necessary to take on his father’s case.
“[My father] was desperate,” Kinyera shared with BBC Newsday. “[T]here is something dehumanising about being in a desperate situation and not being able to do something about it. That is what inspired me the most.”
Many Ugandan landowners have become just as worried about lands they have been forced to flee due to an ongoing war with the guerrilla group LRA.
After being forced to spend years in temporary settlement camps, most face a whole mess of legal troubles trying to exercise their rights to property ownership.
Thankfully, the Kinyera family - led by Jordan’s hard work - did win back their father’s land. Now, the responsibility lies with honest young people like him to fight for the property that was taken from their elders.
"Justice delayed is justice denied,” he said. “My father is 82 years and he can't do much with the land now. It's up to us children to pick up from where he left."