Unknown America Page 13

  * Because of his patriotism, FBI director J Edgar Hoover took a friendly interest in Reagan's political career. Shortly before Reagan announced his candidacy for the California governorship, the FBI discovered that his adopted son, Michael, had unknowingly become close friends with the son of Mafia boss, Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonnano. Hoover agents tipped-off Reagan so he could warn Michael to break off the association before it became an embarrassment and possible political baggage.

  George W. Bush (1989-1993) Bush is the first President to father a future President since John Adams.

  * After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he enlisted in the Navy even though he had been accepted at Yale. Despite his father's disapproval, he signed up for the Navy's flight training program on his 18th birthday. When he received his pilot's wings, he was the Navy's youngest pilot.

  * Bush played first base at Yale and was team captain. He played in two College World Series and had a career batting average of 251.

  * After Ronald Reagan was shot by would-be-assassin John Hinckley, aides wanted Bush to chopper back to the White House but he refused, saying only the President lands on the South Lawn of the White House. He flew to the Vice President's residence instead.

  * Bush was the first sitting Vice President to be elected President since Martin van Buren in 1836.

  William Jefferson Clinton (1993-2001) Clinton was named after his biological father, William Jefferson Blythe Jr., a traveling salesman who died three months before Bill's birth. Clinton didn’t assume his stepfather’s surname until he turned fifteen.

  * During his senior year in high school, he went to Washington, DC as a delegate in an American Legion civics program called Boys Nation. While on the trip he met President John F. Kennedy.

  * Clinton has won Grammies for “Prokofiev: Peter and the World,” and “My Life,” his autobiography.

  * Although never an official Freemason. During his youth, Clinton was a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry.

  * There's a Bill Clinton Boulevard outside the US. Located in Pristina, Kosovo. The boulevard is named after Clinton for his help in the Kosovo War of 1998-99. A 10-foot tall statue of Clinton was added to the boulevard in 2009.

  George W. Bush (2001-2009) “W” was only the second President whose father also held the office. John Quincy Adams also held the distinction.

  * Bush is one of only five Presidents to have won an election despite receiving less votes than his opponent. Al Gore received 543,816 votes more than Bush - but lost the electoral college 271 to 266, giving Bush the victory. As a result, Bush became only the fifth President ever to be elected having lost the popular vote - although he was confirmed as President-Elect more than a month after the election due to the fact votes in Florida (where Bush won by just 527 votes) were originally scheduled for a recount before the US Supreme Court declared this move illegal.

  * Bush was arrested for leading a crowd of “Yalies” in a post-match celebration which involved scaling the goalposts and trying to tear them down following a Yale - Princeton football game in 1967. Interestingly, however, Bush was also arrested at university a second time - less than six months previously. While drunkenly stumbling through the streets of New Haven in December 1966. As the story goes Bush and his friends noticed a huge Christmas wreath on the front door of a shop. The bunch tried to make off with the wreath, only for police officers to drive by at that exact moment and catch them in the act. Bush would later admit he “might have had a few beers.” Ya Think?

  * Bush is the only President with an MBA

  Barack H. Obama (2009-2017) Obama was the first African-American President in US history, although his birth mother was actually Caucasian.

  * Obama's Presidency generated more conspiracy theories than any other President. Questions about his birthplace and thereby qualification to hold office plagued much of his Presidency. Other more bizarre allegations surfaced although none were ever proven. It is not known if the cause of these suspicions were based on his race or were more a matter of his time in history considering the ubiquitous use and popularity of the social media trend that allowed for widespread and unverified accusations.

  * Obama applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while he was studying at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

  * As a teenager he experimented with drugs including marijuana and cocaine.

  * Obama won Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Awards for abridged audio book versions of Dreams from my father in February 2006 and for The audacity of hope in February 2008. He beat Bill Clinton who was seeking his third Grammy with Giving: How each of us can change the world, a call to public service.

  * Barack Obama owns a pair of boxing gloves once worn by Muhammad Ali.

  Donald J. Trump (2017 - ____)

  The election of the Forty-Fifth President of the United States, Donald Trump, the first “Non Politician” President in US history, caught many off guard. Although Trump lost the popular vote, he won with an Electoral Landslide.

  As of this writing, it would be easy to claim that his administration rose to power during the most divisive period in American history since Abraham Lincoln in the mid 1800's, but we will leave that final judgment to future historians.

  * Trump has never smoked cigarettes, consumed alcohol or drugs. His older brother, Fred, was an alcoholic for many years and warned Trump to avoid drinking. Fred ultimately died from his addiction.

  * Trump's residence, Trump Tower, was used as the fictional Wayne Enterprises in the Batman Sequel, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

  * Trump has actually run for President once before. He won the California Presidential primary for the Reform Party in 2000.

  * The early days of his Presidency were marred by protests, anti-Trump rallies and accusations of bigotry, misogyny and aggressive policies.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  UNKNOWN BLACK HISTORY

  The often ignored facts and faces that helped shape America

  The retelling of history is often a challenging and tricky task. Whether through time or negligence, stories are frequently embellished, misreported, attributed incorrectly, deemed unworthy of being told or their telling avoided altogether. While this phenomenon is not unique to any one ethnic group, it does seem to plague the Black race disproportionately considering the significance of the contributions members of the Black community have made when compared to the relatively small percentage that make up the US population.

  It is for this reason that UNKNOWN AMERICA is featuring the “Unknown Black History.”

  Charles Deslondes

  Ask people about the “slave rebellion” of the 19th century and most will mention Nat Turner. But Black Slave Overseer Charles Deslondes’ attempt to seize the city of New Orleans in early 1811 is just as incredible a story as that of Turner's. Deslondes planned his insurrection for years. He organized a force that stole uniforms and weapons from the local militias. It was a highly orchestrated attempt that was, like Turner's rebellion, eventually defeated by superior firepower and greater numbers. After his capture, Deslondes was brutally tortured and executed, and his followers massacred.

  Some historians have speculated the uprising was omitted from the history books because the idea of organized slaves with ideas about freedom and independence didn’t fit the historical narrative. In other words freedom never crossed their mind. Which of course we now know was not the case.

  Hattie McDaniel

  Best known for her role as Mammy in Gone With The Wind, McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Academy Award. Though she got flak for playing “Uncle Tom” type roles, McDaniel fought for the rights of blacks to own homes and was active in community service. Ironically she was not allowed to attend the premier of “Wind” because she was black. She died in October of 1952 having broken yet another barrier for blacks, winning the Oscar. Though she was prohibited from publicly celebrating that victory.

  The Winds of Abolitio
n

  It was an American Colonial Court that legalized slavery in the 1600's in the new land and it was an American Colonial Court that helped pave the way for the end of it.

  Mum Bett, who was a slave also known as Elizabeth Freeman, had the courage to face her master in a court case in Massachusetts in a case that would turn up the volume on the debate whether “Liberty and Justice for All,” meant just that.

  Sometime in the 1770s Freeman was sold to a Colonel John Ashley. Freeman was often abused by the colonel’s wife, so she eventually fled and refused to return. She had often overheard Ashley and his friends discuss the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and she began to wonder why the statutes set forth in those documents should not apply to her. She enlisted the help of Ashley’s friend, an attorney named Theodore Sedgwick.

  In 1781, Sedgwick initiated the case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley, in which he argued for Freeman’s freedom using the Massachusetts Constitution, which stated that all individuals were born free and equal. The jury agreed with Ashley's argument, and the case set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.

  In 1781 Bett was granted her freedom and 30 shillings in damages. And Mum Bett's case would be a precedent ruling that would be debated and referenced for years to come on the road to universal emancipation. Although entirely speculative, had more slaves followed Mum Betts lead and sued for their freedom, the US Civil War, which began some 80 years later, might not have ever occurred. This is not to suggest that slavery was the sole impetus for the war. But it did play a significant role. It is also possible that the resistance to slaves being taught to read may have been that slave holders feared their “property” would learn that they did in fact have rights some US courts would uphold. Of course this depended on the state in which the court resided and whether or not a high court would agree to hear the case.

  Charles R. Drew

  Drew was the first African-American to earn a Doctor of Medical Science degree. Drew heavily impacted the medical field of his time and today. Thanks to him, blood banks were created and he developed a way to process and store blood plasma. He led the blood banks of the United States and Great Britain but refused to do so after a law was passed calling for the segregation of the blood of African-Americans.

  Harriet E. Wilson

  Before there was Ida B. Wells, Zora Hurston, or Alice Walker, there was Harriet Wilson. Wilson was the first African-American woman novelist. In 1895 she became the first African-American to publish a book in the United States. Her book Our Nig: Sketches from the life of a free black, detailed her life as an indentured servant and the physical and emotional abuse she endured. The book did not garner Wilson fame at the time it was written and was mostly lost to history.

  Years later it was found by Henry Louise Gate Jr., and confirmed as the first book published by an African American, of either sex, in America.

  Inoculation was introduced to America by a slave

  Few details are known about the birth of a slave named Onesimus, but it is assumed he was born in Africa in the late seventeenth century before eventually landing in Boston. Onesimus was a gift to the Puritan church minister Cotton Mather from his congregation in 1706.

  While in Mather's possession, Onesimus told him about the centuries old tradition of inoculation practiced in Africa. By extracting material from an infected person and scratching it into the skin of an uninfected person, you could deliberately introduce smallpox to the healthy individual making them immune. Considered extremely dangerous at the time, Mather convinced Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to experiment with the procedure when a smallpox epidemic hit Boston in 1721.

  At least 240 people were inoculated using Onesimus' technique. Opposed for political, religious and medical reasons, public reaction to the experiment put Mather and Boylston’s lives in danger despite records proving that only 2% of inoculated patients died compared to 15% of people not inoculated against the disease.

  Onesimus' traditional African practice was used to inoculate American soldiers during the Revolutionary War and introduced the concept of inoculation to the new nation.

  Slavery in the New World

  Of the roughly 12.5 million Africans shipped to the New World during the Transatlantic Slave trade, fewer than 388,000 actually arrived in America.

  In the late 15th century, the advancement of seafaring technologies created a new Atlantic region that would forever change the world. As ships began connecting West Africa with Europe and the Americas, native populations were decimated. The transatlantic slave trade began primarily due to the native labor force being so diminished and with the growing need for plantation and mining labor, the transatlantic slave trade was begun to fill this void.

  The transatlantic slave trade was conducted from 1500-1866. Shipping more than 12 million African slaves across the world. Over 400 years, the majority of slaves (4.9 million) found their way to Brazil where they suffered incredibly high mortality rates.

  By the time the US Colonies became involved in the slave trade, it had been under way for two hundred years. The majority of its 388,000 slaves arrived between 1700 and 1866, representing a much smaller percentage than most Americans realize.

  (It's also worth noting that President Thomas Jefferson outlawed the importation of slaves in 1807. Meaning that the last 59 years of the practice of importing slaves was illegal and those that continued to do so, criminals)

  Ironically it was a black man, Anthony Johnson, himself once a slave, that would be recognized as the nation’s first “legal” slave holder of record.

  The First “Legal” American slave was owned by a Black Man

  The slave owner was named Anthony Johnson. Johnson, a former slave himself, sued for the legal right, to hold indefinitely, another black man by the name of John Casor.

  Here's how the story unfolds:

  In the mid 1600's John Casor was an indentured servant in Northampton County in the Virginia Colony. He was in service to Johnson, who was a free black.

  In 1653 Casor filed what became known as a freedom suit claiming he had been imported for “seaven or eight yeares” as an indentured servant and that, after attempting to reclaim his indenture, he had been told by Johnson that he didn't have one. (An indenture contract)

  According to the civil court documents, Casor demanded his freedom. Johnson's son-in-law, wife and his two sons persuaded Johnson to set Casor free.

  Casor then went to work for an English Colonist named Robert Parker, who, along with his brother George, would later testify that they knew Casor did indeed have an indenture obligation to Johnson.

  In 1654 Johnson brought suit against Parker for detaining his “Negro servant, John Casor”, saying “He never did see any [indenture] but that he had ye Negro for his life.” In the case of Johnson v. Parker, the court of Northampton County upheld Johnson's right to hold Casor as a slave, since there was no proof of the arrangement Casor claimed he had with Johnson.

  In ordering Casor returned to his master for life, the court both declared Casor a slave and sustained the right of free blacks to own slaves. So in a legal sense, the first owner of a Black slave in the new America was in fact a Black man. (Bear in mind there was no law making slavery legal prior to this case. It was simply a common practice. So the courts ruling legalized the holding of slaves. Which is why Johnson – a Black man – is the first man to own a “Legal” slave)

  Free Blacks and Slaves

  This is probably one of the most misunderstood and revised teachings from history. Yes some Blacks did own slaves in Colonial America such as with Anthony Johnson. But what many Americans do not realize is this practice continued well into the mid 1800's until the abolishment of slavery. Through films such as Gone With The Wind and others, Hollywood has successfully portrayed the practice of slavery as much more widespread and one sided than it actually was.

  Simply put, slave holding, even in the deep south, was simply not as common as some history books, movies and even acti
vists would lead you to believe.

  For example:

  According to the US census report for the last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the United States. About eight million of them lived in the southern slave holding states.

  The census determined that there were fewer than 385,000 people who owned slaves. Even if all slave holders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of the total white population of the entire country; or 4.8 percent of whites in the south owning one or more slaves.

  Also according to census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slave holding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans Louisiana alone. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, reports that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves. This is 28% of the free Negroes in that city.