29 SHARES Share Tweet

“History is written by the victors…by those who have won.” -Dr. Rik Stevenson, Grand Valley State University

This quote is by one of my favorite professors realizing this is one of the greatest epiphanies of my life understanding that the people who win are the same ones that have written for centuries that Jesus was White. Coming to the understanding that it is my job to explore the often overlooked truth of Black History that was both whitewashed and omitted from most history books. One of the largest tragedies in the American school system is that history is ridiculously WHITEWASHED. We often times learn things that are factually incorrect, and the only time we can unlearn this information is if we take an African-American Studies course in college. There we can learn about the impact our ancestors had in the creation, prosperity, and evolution of the United States. Here are 5 Black History facts that you probably didn’t learn in Elementary, Middle or High School.

Donate $1 to Keep The Black Detour Alive

1. The Emancipation Proclamation ABSOLUTELY DID NOT free the Slaves

The Emancipation Proclamation did absolutely nothing to release the colonies of enslaved Black people in America. The 13th Amendment was put into the Bill of Rights in 1865 to eradicate slavery. A clause in the amendment, however, says that it is illegal to enslave anyone unless they are a criminal. This is why, today, our new Jim Crow is mass incarceration.

2. Eugene Jacques Bullard

Eugene Jacques Bullard was the first African-American military pilot to fly in combat during World War I.

3. Isaac Woodard

In 1946, U.S. Army Sergeant Isaac Woodard had a dispute with a Greyhound Bus driver while traveling from Georgia to North Carolina after being discharged from service in World War II. Police officers who met him at the next stop brutally attacked him and subsequently left him permanently blind. The attack on Woodard and several other stories of servicemen returning from war caused public pressure on racial segregation and integrating the Armed Services.

4. Brazil had the highest population of kidnapped Africans during the Transatlantic Slave Trade

The conditions on the Caribbean sugarcane plantations was the absolute worst for enslaved Africans. This is not to say that the plantation conditions in other places, such as the North American plantations weren’t just as bad. However, since the costs for slaves were so low in the Caribbean, they had less incentive to keep them alive because they were easily replaced. Because of morbid brutality, terrible working conditions on the sugarcane plantations, abuse, and malnutrition the Caribbean had the highest mortality rates amongst the slave colonies in the world. Therefore, this misunderstanding that anyone can be Latinx. Being Latinx is just a destination Black people can be and have always been apart of the Latino community.

5. The Reconstruction Era was NOT meant to make Black people feel welcomed in the United States

We always learned that the reconstruction era was alive to make Black people who were just released from bondage ease into the American society and economy. However, this was the furthest from the case. The Reconstruction Era was just a pondering of “how can we make Black people work without paying them since slavery is technically illegal?” This is when the institution of mass incarceration first opened its doors, and convict leasing was created. Convict leasing was a system in which you could rent an inmate to do work. In order to keep Black people enslaved, legislation created Black codes, vagrancy laws, and law enforcement arrested people under dubious charges. The work Black men had to do for free included, but not limited to working in the mines, tilling fields, and building infrastructure for the United States. This is when Black people went from slaves to criminals. Prior to the reconstruction era, the majority of people in jail or in prison were poor, white men. This also includes those that were drunkards, thieves, and the mentally ill. Once Black people were free, they started incarcerating the freedmen and this is where you see the criminalization of Black people ensue.

Black history is just as vast as the Black experience, and we owe it to our ancestors to learn their names, unravel their truth, and let their truth become our truth and our motivation to reveal and manifest our power.

Copyright ©2018 The Black Detour All Rights Reserved.