Skip to content

Tag: writer

african diaspora

BLACK HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: GARRETT MORGAN

By: Leon kwasi Kuntuo-Asare

Garret Augustus Morgan, was born o March 4, 1877 in Claysville, Kentucky. His father a man named Sydney Morgan was a freed-slave, and the son of confederate colonel John H. Morgan, his mother was a slave woman named Elizabeth Reed. At the age of 14, having only a 6th grade education, he would move to Cincinnati,Ohio to look for work. Morgan would eventually gain employment as a handyman for a Cincinnati landowner. In his free-time, he would further his knowledge by studying with a tutor he hired. In 1895, Morgan would move to Cleveland, Ohio, where heee found work as a sewing machine repairman for a clothing maker. The skills he required as a repairman would ultimately send him on the journey of becoming an inventor. He would invent a belt fastener for sewiing machines, and in 1912 he would get his first patent.

when he was not working or inventing, Morgan became interested in his own Black American heritage and the plight of his fellow Black American people, in 1908, he would co-found the Cleveland Association of Colored Men, which was a group dedicated to improving the social and economic situation for Black people. The group would later merge with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Morgan would move his activities beyond entrepreneurship, inventing and activism and would become a philanthropist, giving his own money to support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to help educate his people.

As a businessman, Morgan would eventually open his own sewing business. In 1909, Morgan and his wife Mary Anne expanded their small and growing business empire by opening a clothing store called Morgan’s Cut Rate Ladies Clothing Store. Where he would employee his own people and at one time his store employed 32 people.
As an inventor he would go on to invent Black hair products, the stoplight and the smokehood (a precursor to the gas mask).
He would die on July 27, 1963, in Cleveland, Ohio after living to the ripe age of 86.

Use this link for more information

By LEON KWASI CHRONICLES Posted on

african diaspora 3

BLACK HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: THE FORMER SLAVE CALLIE HOUSE AND HER FIGHT FOR REPARATIONS

By: Leon Kwasi Kuntuo-Asare

Callie House was born a slave in Rutherford, County, not too far from Nashville, Tennessee . House would get married at the young age of 22. Callie and her husband William House would have six children together, but only 5 of those children would survive. After Callie’s husband William House died, she would financially support herself and her family by being a washerwoman.

Later in life, House and a man named Isaiah H. Dickerson would travel through the former Confederate states that formerly sanctioned the ownership of them and their fellow Black people to gain support for the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA).

They would have their gatherings in Black churches, because that was one of the only places Black people could somewhat safely come together without being threatened and harrassed by the White supremacist public.

The objective of the organization, which at its peak had hundreds of thousands of members was to provide compensation, mutual aid and to assist in burial costs of those Black people who were formerly enslaved.

The Federal Post Office Department, despite not having any proof would often accuse reparation organizations like the MRB&PA of committing fraud against its members in an effort to discredit the movement and sabotage their progress.

The Department of Justice would open an investigation on the MRB&PA, and they would eventually be forbidden from sending mail or money orders. In 1901, Dickerson would be found guilty of “swindling”, but the conviction would eventually be overturned. When Dickerson died in 1909, House would become the sole-leader of the MRB&PA. Despite interference and harrassment by the federal government and the Post Office Department the MRB&PA would go on for a while. Eventually though, trumped-up charges or not the Federal government would convict House in 1918, effectively ending the MRB&PA and their fight for reparations.

House would die in 1928 at the age of 66 or 67.

Years later her courage would be remembered and honored when in 2015 the African American and Diaspora Program at Vanderbilt University renamed their research center the Callie House Research Center for the Study of Black Cultures and Politics.

For additional information use the link below:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callie_House

By LEON KWASI CHRONICLES Posted on

africa 6

THE HIDDEN BLACKS OF EGYPT! ( ARTICLE )

image

BY: LEON KWASI KUNTUO-ASARE

Chances are if you were to watch a television program, movie or read an illustrated book on Egypt, you are probably more likely to see an image of a white European than a black African, but despite that ancient historical omission by western media corporations or even most American school textbooks, there are millions of them.

They are the Nubian people of southern Egypt and northern Sudan, the the descendants of the ancient people who ruled the powerful Kingdom of Kush ( also referred to as the Nubian Dynasty), of the central nile Valley. At their height the black Pharoahs of Nubia conquered and ruled over ancient Egypt from 760 BC to 656 BC from their capital of Meroe, in Sudan.

image

image

The modern day Nubians still live in the lands of southern Egypt and northern Sudan, the lands their regal ancestors once dominated. Despite centuries of Arabization they still hold on to their Nubian language, despite speaking Arabic and they still have managed to maintain many of their traditional customs, despite being muslims.

image

image

But despite all that great history and culture, the Nubians of Egypt are still a marginalized people in their own land, like blacks in the Americas. Thousands of Nubians were forced to relocate from the land their people lived in for thousands of years when the Aswan Dam was created in the 1960s and even now they also are forced to deal with harsh racism by mainstream Arab Egyptians, and a disproportionate amount of Nubian-Egyptians are forced to work in menial jobs, and in Cairo is filled with impoverished Nubians communities, who are often forced to take shelter on rooftops.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON MODERN NUBIANS IN EGYPT:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/21/egypt-nubians-dam

By LEON KWASI CHRONICLES Posted on