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Showing posts from March, 2026

THE MOST EVIL RECORD

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Whenever I inevitably hear someone say black people need to get over racism, I think about Thomas Thistlewood, who was a plantation owner in Jamaica and a prolific writer whose diary spanned over 14,000 pages.  Most of it was intricate details of how he tortured and raped slaves.  Thistlewood was the inventor of a particular type of torture called "Derby's dose", which entailed whipping a slave, then soaking their wounds in lime juice and salt and then forcing another slave to defecate in their mouth, bandaging their mouth shut for days.

The Ramadan Slave Revolt

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#RamadanMubarak  The MalĂȘ Revolt (1835) — A Legacy of Faith and Resistance This holy month we remember one of the most powerful and least discussed acts of resistance in the Americas: the MalĂȘ Revolt. In January of 1835, during the holy month of Ramadan in Salvador, enslaved and free African Muslims—many of them Yoruba, Hausa, and Nupe—organized a carefully planned uprising against Brazil’s brutal slave system. They were known as MalĂȘs, a term used in Brazil for African Muslims (from the Yoruba word Imale). What made this revolt unique was not just its courage—but its discipline, literacy, and faith. Many of the MalĂȘs could read and write Arabic, something rare in the Americas at the time. Authorities later discovered: •Qur’anic verses •handwritten Arabic plans •protective talismans and prayers These documents showed a level of organization that terrified Brazil’s slaveholding class. On the night of January 24–25, 1835, hundreds of Muslim rebels dressed in white garments—some carry...

Painted Picture

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Back in 2017, 3 things happened to highlight the danger Black people feel simply on the basis of being Black: Trump's advent, the cinematic release and popularity of Get Out , and most recently the release of the Mike Brown video of him that supports the contention that he had not committed a robbery that put him at odds with law enforcement (and his killer, officer Darren Wilson) in the first place. These incidents bring to light, once again, the historical picture that is painted about Black males, especially by White males, immediately after the Civil War. Prior to emancipation Black men were not seen as threatening - slave masters would travel throughout the country, leaving their families, especially their women, in the care and/or presence of slaves with nary a concern. After emancipation, the view of males morphed from placated servants to lascivious, dangerous predators - a consequence of guilt and fear aimed at now-free people who just might want to seek retribution for ...