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Blacks debarking from the White Lion It is commonly believed that the history of African Americans in English North America began in August 1619, when the White Lion, an English privateer based in the Netherlands, traded “20 and Odd Negroes” captured off Mexico from a Portuguese slave ship for food. Because these first blacks were…
Read MoreThis book is an augmented, comprehensive study of African Americans’ accomplishments since arriving with the Spanish in North America in 1526—nearly a century before the first Anglo-Saxons landed near Jamestown. The book documents their perseverance despite a saga of racism and white supremacy seldom taught in American schools at any level. Seventy-eight photographs, maps, charts,…
Read MoreNot until 2022 will the United States have been free of slavery as long as that execrable institution existed on our soil – it existed in all thirteen colonies until the Northern states gradually began to abolish the institution after we became a country. By the Civil War, slavery no longer existed in the Northern…
Read MoreSlavery, racism, and genocide, America’s horrors, are seldom discussed in the “manifest destiny,” of our “shining beacon on a hill.” It is difficult, nearly impossible, to separate the phenomenon of slavery from racism and white supremacy since both of the latter were used to justify permanent enslavement of African Americans. Nor is this a sectional…
Read MoreIn its June 2020 issue, Time magazine observed: “the slightest and smallest level of alleged misconduct or suspicious behavior is suitable to justify the police killer’s unreasonable fear.” Often, the killing of unarmed blacks is justified by describing past misconduct. Many believe that victims of summary execution somehow deserve their fate. Policing is a dangerous…
Read MoreThe issue of police brutality against African Americans is not new.
Read MoreContinuing to research and rewrite my forthcoming book, African Americans in American History, I found a lot more material on the topic of black Confederate soldiers. So much, in fact, that I made the topic a separate chapter instead of an add-on to US Colored Troops. The Confederates clearly recognized the efficacy of the 200,000…
Read MoreSix black regular army regiments were authorized by an act of Congress in 1867, two cavalry, the 9th and 10th, and four infantry regiments, the 38th through 41st. About half of the regiments’ strength were veterans of the US Colored Troops and provided most of the regiments’ non-commissioned officers. Two years later, budget cutbacks reduced…
Read MoreSadly, white supremacy and racism are much in the news these days. Our president recognized “good people” among the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and similar groups in Charlottesville in August 2017, encouraging them. The greatest paradox of America has been the existence of castes of people excluded from the Declaration of Independence’s central premise…
Read MoreCOLLECTIVE AMNESIA: AMERICAN APARTHEID African Americans’ 400 Years in North America, 1619-2019 Eugene DeFriest Betit Xlibris (502 pp.); February 14, 2019 BOOK REVIEW An accomplished American historian explores the roots and effects of the mistreatment of African Americans in the United States. Much of the history in Bétit’s (War’s Cost, 2016, etc.) carefully researched and…
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