DC Minner Rentiesville Museum / For Blues Inc

03/07/2023

02/19/2023

Jack L. Cooper, pictured here in 1954, started playing records on the air in 1931. Cooper was the first African American disc jockey with a commercially successful radio show.

Jack on his program helped to reunite families in Chicago, Illinois with lost migrants from the South.

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02/19/2023

A pioneering African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley was born in Senegal around 1753. At the age of 8, she was kidnapped and brought to Boston on a slave ship. Upon her arrival, John Wheatley purchased the young girl as a servant for his wife, Susanna.

Under the family's direction, Wheatley (who, as was the custom at the time, adopted her master's last name) was taken under Susanna's wing. While Wheatley suffered from poor health, her quick intelligence was hard to miss, and as a result, Susanna did not train her to be her servant.

Instead, Wheatley received lessons in theology, English, Latin and Greek. Ancient history was soon folded into the teachings, as were lessons in mythology and literature. Additionally, Wheatley, while still a slave, enjoyed limited restrictions on her life and became a part of the family. At a time when African Americans were discouraged and intimidated from learning how to read and write, Wheatley's life was an anomaly.

Wheatley wrote her first published poem at age 12. The work, a story about two men who nearly drown at sea, was printed in the Newport Mercury. Other published poems followed, with several also being published, further increasing Wheatley's fame.

In 1773, Wheatley gained considerable stature when her first and only book of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published. Susanna Wheatley helped finance its publication. As proof of her authorship, the volume included a preface in which 17 Boston men claimed that she had indeed written the poems in it.

Poems on Various Subjects is a landmark achievement in American history. In publishing it, Wheatley became the first African American and first U.S. slave to publish a book of poems, as well as the third American woman to do so.

Following the publication of her book, Wheatley traveled to London to promote her poems, and received medical treatment for a health ailment that she had been battling.

After her return to Boston, Wheatley's life changed significantly. While ultimately freed from slavery, she was devastated by the deaths of several Wheatley family members, including Susanna (d. 1774) and John (d. 1778).

In 1778, Wheatley married a free African American from Boston, John Peters, with who she had three children, all of whom died in infancy. Their marriage proved to be a struggle, with the couple battling constant poverty. Ultimately, Wheatley was forced to find work as a maid in a boarding house.

Wheatley did continue to write, but the growing tensions with the British and, ultimately, the Revolutionary War, weakened enthusiasm for her poems. While she contacted various publishers, she was unsuccessful in finding support for a second volume of poetry.

A strong supporter of America's fight for independence, Wheatley penned several poems in honor of the Continental Army's commander, George Washington. It's not certain whether Washington ever read her work.

Phillis Wheatley died in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 5, 1784.

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02/19/2023

Free Classroom Resource

02/19/2023

18 Fort Mose, the First Black Settlement in the United States

In our lovely history books growing up, the story of the creation of the nation state of the United States is usually reduced to a pretty simple narrative. It’s Jamestown to Plymouth Rock to the shot heard round the world and the writing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights by the English-descended founding fathers. There are usually mentioned some enslaved people who had no agency, some defeated natives (with a long detour into the Lost Colony and a horrendously false story about Pocahontas (or Mataoka) falling in love with John Smith) and then its on to the war of 1812. Often left out of this narrative are some important details - that different colonial powers, not just England, were constantly struggling for power in the new to them territory, neither blacks nor natives were monolithic, and were constantly rebelling, forming political alliances, and just trying to live a free life, and religion was always a piece of the puzzle.

Fort Mose is a remarkable place and has a remarkable story, and it’s one of those I didn’t learn in school- because it complicates things. From the very beginning the enslaved Africans (brought from many different regions on the continent) were constantly trying to escape, and often succeeded, especially in the early days. In the late 1600s present day Florida was under Spanish control, and the Spanish crown was offering asylum to newly self-emancipated Africans, if they would submit to baptism in the Catholic faith and renaming, and serve 4 years in the militia. By 1742 this community, situated within St Augustine, had grown into a thriving maroon settlement.

Captain Francisco Menendez was the head of the free black militia in St Augustine; born in the Gambian region of West Africa as a part of the Mandingo ethnic group he had formerly escaped from Carolina. He became a trusted military officer and when the Governor of St Augustine set up a fort two miles north, he was chosen to lead it. This Fort, originally called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, eventually just called Fort Mose, was not only the first legally sanctioned free black settlement in the US, it was also Spain’s first line of defense against the British in Florida. It’s not like the Spanish were offering sanctuary to runaways because they were nice guys. They needed skilled labour, and they needed fighters, as they weren’t getting much support from the Spanish crown.

When the Spanish ceded Florida to the English, Fort Mose was abandoned, most of the black community there moved to Cuba, and outside of a few more skirmishes fought there, its history was largely forgotten. In the 1980s this important site was finally explored, catalogued, and is now part of the National Park system.

“From 1986-1988 a team of specialists headed by Dr. Kathleen Deagan of the Florida Museum of Natural History carried out an archaeological and historical investigation at Ft. Mose. Their discoveries show that African Americans played important roles in the rivalry and confrontations between England and Spain in the colonial Southeast. The people of Mose were guerrilla fighters who made politically astute alliances with the Spaniards and their Native American allies, and waged fierce war against their former masters. The Black militia fought bravely alongside Spanish regulars to drive off the English and their allied Native American forces who attacked St. Augustine in 1740, and the Black troops also fought in the Spanish counter-offence against Georgia two years later.

The men and women who formed the community at Mose are no longer anonymous. Centuries-old documents recovered in the colonial archives of Spain, Florida, Cuba, and South Carolina by historian Dr. Jane Landers tell us who lived in Mose and something about what it was like to live there. We know that in 1759 the village consisted of twenty-two palm thatch huts which housed thirty-seven men, fifteen women, seven boys and eight girls. These villagers attended Mass in a wood church where their priest also lived. The people of Mose farmed the land and the men stood guard at the fort or patrolled the frontier. Most of the Carolina fugitives married fellow escapees, but some married Native American women or enslaved people living in St. Augustine.” —floridamuseum.ufl.edu

Again, waiting for the movie. 😉

Website: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/research/st-augustine/fort-mose/

Book: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p067532

02/17/2023

13 Fisk Jubilee Singers, World Famous Choir Who Saved School

Everyone knows of Nashville’s reputation as Music City, USA - but few know that it started to garner that reputation far before the creation of the Grand Ol’ Opry and the explosion of Country Music. In 1871 a small group of singers set out from Fisk University on a tour that eventually put Nashville on the map.

Fisk University was first called the Fisk Free Colored School; opened in 1866, it was one of the many missionary-based schools for the formerly enslaved people being organized in different places around the south; the newly freed were hungry for education across the board. Still around today, it was the first African American school accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and is the oldest institute for higher learning in Nashville. Read that again. But a few years after its founding it was facing major financial woes - it was often tough to raise funds for these schools, they were opposed by the recently defeated planter class and were often sabotaged and even occasionally burned down.

At Fisk, a choir had been formed soon after the creation of the school and it unexpectedly led the way to salvation. In 1871 they went on a tour of the United States to raise funds and interest in Fisk; christened the Fisk Jubilee Singers by their founder G.L. White, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They raised over $40,000 for the school with those first tours, funded the first permanent building on campus (eventually called “Jubilee Hall” and still around today), and raised awareness of their school, and by extension, the town of Nashville. They performed for the President, the Queen, and dignitaries all over the US, the UK and Europe - and they did something further. They exposed the world to a heretofore secret mode of music we now call the Negro Spiritual - passed down in an oral tradition, these songs had been largely only known within the Black community. But as sung by the formerly enslaved Fisk Jubilee Singers (and arranged by director White), they astonished audiences wherever they went. Up until this point, the world’s idea of African American music was firmly rooted in the black face minstrel show - music, dance and comedy routines performed by whites in burnt cork (and blacks after Emanciapation), and they were amazed to hear music by actual black people that sounded nothing like minstrelsy.

They were lauded, they saved their institution from bankruptcy, they introduced Negro Spirituals to the world, they spawned countless imitators, and … they disbanded in 1878. The original 9 never earned their diplomas because of the grueling touring schedule, and the racism, abuse, and poor traveling conditions they faced were exhausting, demoralizing, and traumatic. This is the saddest part of the story for me, as a performer, and one that I put to the forefront of my mind whenever I have a minute of grousing about a late airplane or a cramped hotel room.

But the Fisk Jubilee singers quickly rose again, and are still around today. A little heralded but absolutely incredible chapter of their story happens from 1886 to 1890 when a version of the group, led by former member Frederick Loudin, travelled all over Australia, New Zealand, India, and other points in South Asia, to great acclaim. Find more about that here: https://fiskmusicmusiceverywhere.omeka.net/exhibits/show/the_fisk_jubilee_singers_trave/overview--the-fisk-jubilee-sin

Oh yes, and about that city nickname: As per the Nashville paper The Tennessean: "Queen Victoria was so impressed with the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the story goes, that she said they must be from a 'city of music.’"

And 50 years later, when the Grand Ol' Opry started to take off on WSM, the nickname became firmly established. Once again, we laid the groundwork and then got forgot. But people are restoring the narrative, and it’s great to see.

website (2): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-fisk-jubilee-singers-amazing-story-from-slavery-to-stardom

podcast: https://wpln.org/radio-special-three-castles-and-the-music-city-150-years-of-the-fisk-jubilee-singers/

book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1586242
This is from a wonderful author who also wrote “The Slave’s War”, where I found inspiration for my song Juile.

on screen: https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-culture/2019/11/19/american-experience-jubilee-singers-sacrifice-and

02/14/2023

That's why I love the Sunsets

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