Category: history

Martin Luther King

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Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida

Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy in St. Augustine, Florida

Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida
June 12, 1964

On June 11, 1964, Dr. King and several other activists were arrested for attempting to integrate the Monson Motor Lodge. When interviewed during his brief incarceration, King pledged to challenge segregation in St. Augustine “even if it takes all summer.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Center - Miami

Miami-Dade Junior College. February 15, 1972.

Even the dead won’t be safe… via itself.blog
Avowed socialist… via Jacobin

Fidel Castro

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Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader of revolution, dies at 90.(bbc) Hero and tyrant.

Fidel Castro, who towered over his Caribbean island for nearly five decades, a shaggy-bearded figure in combat fatigues whose long shadow spread across Latin America and the world, is dead at age 90. (Miami Herald)

…the fiery apostle of revolution (nytimes)

…fight colonialism (atlanta black star)

“A revolution is not a bed of roses” 1959 (the guardian)

Blacks americans and Castro (Quartz)


Fidel Castro shares a laugh with Malcolm X at the Hotel Theresa in New York, October 19, 1960.
REUTERS/Prensa Latina

Toni Morrison

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No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear by Toni Morrison
March 23, 2015, The Nation.

Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush.

I am staring out of the window in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. Then a friend, a fellow artist, calls to wish me happy holidays. He asks, “How are you?” And instead of “Oh, fine—and you?”, I blurt out the truth: “Not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the election….” I am about to explain with further detail when he interrupts, shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”

A similar sentiment. (Paris Review)

UNIA in California

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UNIA Division 156 of Los Angeles was part of a general spread of Garveyism between 1920 and 1921. According to UNIA parent body records recently uncovered in New York City, by 1926 there were sixteen divisions and chapters of the UNIA in California.

Source: Emory Tolbert, The UNIA and Black Los Angeles: Ideology and Community in the American Garvey Movement (Los Angeles, 1980), pp. 57-58, 53.

Via Dr. Taylor.