IKOCT19

When the Freed Fought Back: The Black Militias Who Faced the Klan — and Won a Nation’s Respect

In 1871, under President Ulysses S. Grant, Black militias in South Carolina stood shoulder to shoulder with U.S. troops to dismantle Ku Klux Klan terror. Led by men like Prince Rivers, Robert Smalls, and Jim Williams, these disciplined defense units proved that when granted the means, freedmen could protect their communities — not through charity, but through courage and organization. Their stand remains one of America’s most overlooked triumphs of Reconstruction.

Granville T. Woods: The Relentless Inventor Who Wired the Rails—and Fought to Be Heard

Granville Tailer Woods moved through the Gilded Age like current through copper—restless, purposeful, and always looking for a cleaner path. Between 1884 and 1910 he secured more than fifty U.S. patents spanning railroad communications, electric traction, and lighting controls. Much of what made early mass transit safer and more scalable traces back to his bench: induction-based “railway telegraphy,” smarter current …

AFRICAN-MAP-14

The Berlin Conference: When Europe Carved Africa Without Consent

Unpacking the Berlin Conference: A Blueprint for Black Dispossession What follows is not just a history lesson—it’s an excavation. In peeling back the layers of willful amnesia and cognitive dissonance, we revisit the Berlin Conference of 1884, a calculated gathering of European powers where Africa was carved up like a pie—without a single African present. This wasn’t diplomacy. It was …

Juneteenth: A Commemoration to Slavery’s Formal Finality

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.  Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January …

Garrett-MD

Garrett County, Maryland and the Little Church That Was

In a rural Maryland community, a historic Black church brings a reckoning over a racist history that is still prevalent today. Serving a Black community in Garrett County, Maryland at the turn of the 20th century, the once known as Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, or Bethel AME disappeared almost entirely in the span of a few short decades. Seated …

WRIGHTVILLE, AK

Negro Boys Industrial School Fire of 1959

Negro Boys Industrial School Fire of 1959 AKA: Wrightsville Fire of 1959 On March 5, 1959, twenty-one African-American boys burned to death inside a dormitory at an Arkansas reform school in Wrightsville (Pulaski County). The doors were locked from the outside. The fire mysteriously ignited around 4:00 a.m. on a cold, wet morning, following earlier thunderstorms in the same area of …

Berlin Conference

Berlin Conference: Forum on Colonization of Africa

Have you ever questioned where white European interest imposing colonization on Africa originated? This imperial initiative was conceived and accelerated at the Berlin conference of European countries. Put in more precise terms the action is called unprovoked, violent expansionism. Europe and America left the confines of their territories and descended on a continent to rape and pillage resources of which …

Executive Order Establishing the “1776 Commission”

Establishing the “1776 Commission” is the latest effort to justify America’s indelible slave economy origins and present-day persistent, rancid-racist ideology. Any ill-conceived notions that excites Trump’s under-educated, racist voting block will be employed while attempting to derail the upcoming 2020 elections. Trump recently announced several measures aimed at promoting what he called “patriotic education” while blasting progressive efforts at re-examining …