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S1E5: You Need To Know Where You Live...
18 Plays22 days ago
This episode will explore one of Books, BBQ & Black History’s mantras: “you need to know where you live.” I’ll be discussing some of the Black NC history and figures I’ve learned about over the years, like the Greensboro Massacre, Pauli Murray, and more. The NC events and historical figures will be used to provide an understanding of how Black oppression (and strategizing against it) connects the past, present and future.
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Transcript
Introduction and Trigger Warning
00:00:01
Books, BBQ & Black History
All right, welcome back to another episode of Books, BBQ and Black History. This is episode five, our mid-season episode, so we made it, y'all.
00:00:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
Today's episode, I do want to give a trigger warning before I get into anything. But first, my name. I am Toya, a North Carolina based social scientist, educator and organizer with an abolitionist praxis.
Scope of the Episode: Sensitive Historical Topics
00:00:28
Books, BBQ & Black History
The trigger warning that I want to give now is just noting that this episode will contain references to or discussions of slavery, sexual violence, white supremacist terrorism and mentions of suicide. Please be sure to take care of your mental health. I'd just like to share this so you have an awareness of where conversations might be going. So please know that that's really for your for your sake.
Influential Black Historical Events and Figures
00:00:56
Books, BBQ & Black History
So today we are actually going to be discussing North Carolina Black history and some events and some people that have been very influential in just me as a person just learning about you know Black people and just learning about you know Black North Carolina history. So we'll talk today about what I mean when I say you need to know where you live. And I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm going really talk about like where that idea for me comes from. and we'll get into discussion about some Black North Carolina historical events. I'll tell you kind of what I've learned about them, where I learned it from, how it influences like me as a person or my sociological analysis, and the suggestion of a book you can read or just a way to learn more about the event and or person.
00:01:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
I am, like I said, specifically focusing on North Carolina for this particular episode. And i want to give a heavy, heavy reminder that I am not a historian.
00:02:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
I am just sharing with you things that I have learned and i use kind of the sociology that I know, the social science, to kind of connect dots, I would say, of like systems. So we'll be talking, like I said, about some relevant North Carolina historical events.
Key Events and Figures in North Carolina History
00:02:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I feel like I should just go on and tell you what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the Greensboro sit-ins, the Greensboro Massacre the Wilmington Massacre something else, but that'll come at the end of the episode.
00:02:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
some Black North Carolina figures so Anna Julia Cooper, Pauli Murray, Harriet Jacobs. We'll talk about all of these people, all of these events. i Like I said, I'll share some stuff with you. So before we get into really any of that, we have to start with our excerpt of the day. So I'm going to share this excerpt of the day. And per usual, at the end of the episode, I will tell you who wrote this and where this came from and why I included it in this particular episode. So here goes.
00:03:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
During the long nights, I was restless for want of air and I had no room to toss and turn. There was but one compensation. The atmosphere was so stifled that even mosquitoes would not condescend to buzz it.
00:03:22
Books, BBQ & Black History
In it. With all my detestation of Dr. Flint, I could hardly wish him a worse punishment, either in this world or that which is to come, than to suffer what I suffered in one single summer.
00:03:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
Yet the laws allowed him to be out here, out in the free air, while i guiltless of a crime, was pent up here as the only means of avoiding the cruelties of the laws allowed him to afflict upon me.
00:03:48
Books, BBQ & Black History
I don't know what kept life within me. Again and again, i thought I should die before long, but I saw the leaves of another autumn world through the air and felt the touch of another winter. In the summer, the most terrible thunderstorms were acceptable for the rain came through the roof and I rolled up my bed that it might cool the hot boards under it.
00:04:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
Later in the season, storms sometimes wet my clothes through and through. and that was not comfortable when the air grew chilly. Moderate storms I could keep out by filling the chinks with oakum.
00:04:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
But uncomfortable as my situation was, I had glimpses of things out of doors which made me thankful for my wretched hiding place. One day I saw a slave pass our gate muttering, it's his own and he can kill it if he will.
00:04:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
my grandfoot My grandmother told me that woman's history. Her mistress had that day seen her baby for the first time, and in the lineaments of his fair face, she saw a likeness to her husband.
00:04:44
Books, BBQ & Black History
She turned the bond woman and her child out of the door out of doors and forbade her ever to return. The slave went to her master and told him what happened. He promised to talk with her mistress and make it all right.
00:04:56
Books, BBQ & Black History
The next day, she and her baby were sold to a Georgia trader. Another time I saw a woman rush wildly by, pursued by two men. She was a slave, the wet nurse of her mistress's children.
00:05:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
For some trifling offense, her mistress ordered her to be stripped and whipped. to a escape To escape the degradation and the torture, she rushed to the river, jumped in, and ended her wrongs in death.
00:05:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
Senator Brown of Mississippi could not be ignorant of many such facts as these fought for they are a frequent occurrence in every Southern state. Yet he stood up in the Congress of the United States and declared that slavery was a great moral, social, and political blessing, a blessing to the master and a blessing to the slave.
00:05:38
Books, BBQ & Black History
I suffered much more during the second winter than I did the first. My limbs were benumbed by inaction and the cold filled them with cramp. I had a very painful sensation of coldness in my head, even my face and tongue stiffened, and I lost the power of speech.
00:05:54
Books, BBQ & Black History
Of course, it was impossible under the circumstances to summon any physician. My brother William came and did all he could for me. Uncle Philip also watched tenderly over me, and poor grandmother crept up and down to inquire whether there were any signs of returning life.
00:06:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
So that is the excerpt for today. We will revisit that at the end. So let's go ahead and get started. So the first thing I want to talk about is what I mean by this idea of you need to know where you live and like where that stems from for me.
Importance of Local History and Personal Research
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Books, BBQ & Black History
So I recognize that a lot of information is intentionally left out of like just learning or you know school, all of that. And because I understand that it's intentionally left out, I'm just a naturally curious person. So I'm just like, oh, well, you know let me just find out you know about where I'm from. And so I am from Eastern North Carolina, 252, if you know that area.
00:07:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I'll talk a little bit more about my hometown in another episode. But the town I want to talk about is called Grimesland That's where I spent a good majority of my... younger years and in this in this spirit of this idea of you need to know where you live, I'm also a like, I like to model things that I talk about. So I did research and I was like, oh, well, I want to know, you know, the history of Grimesland Because that's what I mean about you need to know where you live. I want to know like about the history of whatever it is that I'm looking at. So i this was actually recent that I looked this up. But if you go to the website for the Town town of Grimesland.com,
00:07:48
Books, BBQ & Black History
And actually, let me back that up. Let me tell you where Grimesland is. So it is in eastern North Carolina. And if you're from North Carolina, if you're not from that area, i would say the closest place would be Greenville, North Carolina. So if you're familiar with East Carolina University, Grimesland is like a small town outside of that. So that is the place that I'm talking about. So this is what I found from, again, just looking up some basic stuff. I just want know really basic stuff about the city. This is what is on the website for the town of Grimesland. It says the Grimes plantation was the homestead of Bryan Grimes. Bryan Grimes was born on the plantation originally known as Grimesland on November 2nd, 1828, where he ultimately passed on 1880.
00:08:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
The plantation serves as a look into the living past of the community in and around the town of Grimesland. So that is, you know, when I read that, was like, that's a very soft,
00:08:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
soft way to kind of talk about a place being a plantation. So I, of course, am going to look even further than that. So i start kind of researching and i came across a article actually in the Daily Tar Heel where they talked a little bit more about the Grimes family and kind of the history of that plantation.
00:09:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
And so I'm going to tell you what I found when I did that. So it says the Grimes family were some of North Carolina's wealthiest slaveholders who derived their fortune from the labor of Black men, women, and children they enslaved. Bryan Grimes Jr. served in the Confederate Army and was given the Grimesland farm by his father in 1851 as a gift after Bryan Grimes Jr. remarried.
00:09:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
The farm included 750 acres of fields and woodland and 25 enslaved people to work the lands the land and generate profit. Over the next decade, there were fluctuations in the size of the enslaved community on the plantation, suggesting that Brian Grimes Jr. was actively involved in the in the domestic slave trade.
00:09:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
His private papers also indicate that he sexually exploited enslaved women. Bryan Grimes Jr. also collaborated with William L. Saunders in organizing the KKK in Eastern North Carolina at the time when Saunders was a state level c Klan leader. Saunders encouraged Bryan to manage but vigilantes in Eastern North Carolina and Bryan was later identified as a senior officer in the Klan's local organization. Bryan Grimes Jr's legacy was curated by his family in efforts to memorial memorialize him as a brave Confederate hero. His son, John Bryan Grimes, was a UNC trustee, that's you the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for those that don't know. and served on the board's executive committee when his members made the decision to memorialize the newly constructed Grimes Residence Hall for his father.
00:10:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
So, that's a lot more in context about Grimesland and the Grimes Plantation than what was on the website for like the actual town. And as I kind of read through it, I was like, yeah, bet they really didn't want to talk about that. But the reason why I find that like just so interesting because one, it lets me know that i as a Black person, like I grew up on land, again, that literally was a plantation. The city itself is named after you know the plantation owner. And i also think about how like something that's really common for people to do is like to get tattoos of like the names of the place places that they're from, their cities, you know, zip codes, area codes, like that is a thing. And I think about, you know, Black people tattooing the names of cities that they're from, knowing not knowing like that sort of history about their cities and branding yourself with the name of a slave owner, even after they're dead.
00:11:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
And that for me like when i came across like this isn't the first time i like read this i want to say i found this out like years ago but i'm telling this story because this story is like a really great example about why i think it's so important for people to know where they live because i'm just like you know I really think about all the time, like I grew up like on a plantation and like, of course it wasn't a plantation when I was like living there, but like living on that land and like not actually knowing that and
00:12:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
you know, having to go out of my way to like find that out because again, even the city itself isn't telling the truth about, you know, what it was and like, and I've written past, you know, the house, like the plantation house is like still there and I've written past it and didn't even like,
00:12:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
know it. And so like, that's why I say like, it's really, really important to know these things about, you know, the places that you live. And, you know, I'm just a naturally curious person. So I look these things up, but that's why I think it's so important again, for me to be sharing these things that I found out because I hope, you know, after listening to this, like you get curious about like where you're from in North Carolina, because i would love to learn about all these places.
Impact of the Greensboro Sit-ins
00:13:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
All right, so i now want to get into some of the historical events that the Black North Carolina historical events that I have learned about. These are not all the things I have learned about. These are just the ones that I'm including in this episode. So the first one I actually want to talk about are the Greensboro sit-ins. so I'm going to tell you a little bit about what the event actually is. So a little context about it I'm going tell you how i learned about it, how I kind of process it as a social scientist. And then I'll just give you the suggestion for like a book. So this will be for the events that I'm talking about.
00:14:01
Books, BBQ & Black History
So the Greensboro sit-ins, happen. So on February first 1964 African-American students of North Carolina Agricultural Technical State University sat a white sat at a whites only lunch counter inside of a Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworths store. While sit-ins had happened elsewhere in the United States, the Greensboro sit-ins catalyzed a wave of nonviolent protest protests against private private sector segregation in the United States. And that is the history from the North Carolina History Project. This that I'm about to read comes from the student national, I'm sorry, the SNCC Digital Gateway. So following the first Greensboro protest, The original four students grew to 27 on the second day and 63 students on the third day. The mass of protesters occupied almost every seat so that no seating was left for white patrons.
00:15:01
Books, BBQ & Black History
The protesters included four women from Bennett College, the historically Black women's college near A&T, who had been strategizing about direct action protests, in the community over the past year.
00:15:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
Dr. Esther A. Terry, a Bennett student at the time, recalled we went downtown wearing hats and we wore gloves and we were Bennett ladies. It was just such a dark jarring thing to be told, well, Bennett lady, guess what? You can't sit down there and have a cherry coat.
00:15:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
The Greensboro sit-ins inspired mass movement across the South. By April 1960, 70 southern cities had sit-ins of their own. Direct action sit-ins made public what Jim Crow wanted to hide.
00:15:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
Black resistance to segregation. By directly challenging segregation in highly visible places, activists grab the attention of the media. So that is, you know, just a little background about the Greensboro sit-ins, if you're not familiar with them.
00:15:57
Books, BBQ & Black History
How I actually learned about them is I have lots of connections to A&T. That's what I'll say. But I went to school in Greensboro. So, you know, i learned about it, you know, because if you are any, if you were just aware of like A&T culture, then like that's something that they talk about like quite a bit. It is literally like a day that is celebrated like through or memorialized, I would say, that is memorialized like during like the academic year. So
00:16:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
it is a really big deal and A&T teaches the students about it. So you if you're in Greensboro it's probably something that you are gonna learn about.
00:16:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
I will say that of course there's a lot of Black history people don't learn about but this is one of the things I think actually more people would know about than some of the other things and people that I'm going to talk about. So yeah, so definitely talked about and there's a museum like here and we're not here but there's a museum in Greensboro, the International Civil Rights Museum. So like, you can like go and if I'm not mistaken, I think it actually might be a like, well actually now let me not say that I want to be wrong. But it is in downtown Greensboro, the International Civil Rights Museum. and you can go there and, you know, learn about this. Woolworths is still out there as well.
00:17:28
Books, BBQ & Black History
There's also a exhibit at the African-American Museum in D.C., also learned about it just by having conversations with like people in greensboro who have like historical knowledge of the city and also you know conversations with bennett bells and i'll mention them in a second because i'm specifically gonna you know mention like why they're being mentioned in the way that they are but this event when i learned about it like
00:17:59
Books, BBQ & Black History
how I kind of unpack that as a sociologist is like, it's just a reminder and a demonstration of like the systematic discrimination in the United States has, you know, always pretty much been normal with the support of the government, I might say. But like, it's always been like a normal thing because, you know,
00:18:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
those sit-ins were literally someone like breaking the law. And so like, to me, that's also a really great example of like how the law, the law is not moral. Like it's just rules that people expect you to follow. And by those Black people you know, pushing back against like someone telling them like, you can't come in here to eat, which was them breaking a law, by the way. They challenged that.
00:18:54
Books, BBQ & Black History
And to me, that's really important. Like thinking about the work that I do, thinking about like the things that I write about, that I, you know, teach about, like it's really important, you know, for me to like know that, know,
00:19:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
there is this history of like civil disobedience because again when you understand that the law is not moral and all crime like what people are calling crimes are usually defined by people in power you know because and actually i won't get into that there's a whole you know conversation to be had about crime but the point of that is is that by them doing what they did during these sit-ins like they were literally breaking the law but the law itself was unjust so there is a time when you should not obey the law especially when the law itself is immoral like someone telling you that you can't eat somewhere because the color of your skin i don't care like if people voted on that like and like why is that a law like voting on people's like
00:20:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
autonomy and rights is a weird thing for people to like justify. And like, that's something I think about, like, as someone who like studies like systems about like what those systems kind of allow in and how people again, like participate in them.
00:20:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
And like I said, it's really asking that question again of like, who gets to define what a crime is? Who made that decision that black people couldn't be around white people? And I know that like, this is like,
00:20:27
Books, BBQ & Black History
people in power. So white people under the white supremacist hierarchy that say Black people aren't human would make laws, you know, to make sure that they're separate. So like, to me, this is again, that demonstration of, you know, the law being used to again, uphold white supremacist hierarchies.
00:20:48
Books, BBQ & Black History
This is also a great demonstration for me about how like North Carolina is not exempt from white supremacy and oh my goodness, the things that I have learned about this state, y'all.
00:21:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
But North Carolina is not exempt from white supremacy and Black people here have always been pushing back against it. Like, yes, voting. But that's like not what like people were doing, you know, that wasn't like the totality of like what was in the toolbox. And a lot of those things that, you know, people were doing are also the things that you're not being taught about. So like, again, it's really kind of understanding that we have always like pushed back against white supremacy in many, many different ways. So that was just a really good example of that. Also want to note that this is this the story about the Greensboro of sit-ins is also a really great example about what I talked about previously about patriarchy, devaluing like women's contributions. Because even if you are like in Greensboro learning about the Greensboro sit-ins, like the Bennett Belles are like rarely ever mentioned. and so like And if you are unfamiliar, the Bennett College is a HBCU in Greensboro, North Carolina for women, for Black women. And
00:22:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
It's the only one in the state, if I'm not mistaken. And like they also you know did a lot of organizing, participated in you know the Greensboro sit-ins. But like even if people talk about those sit-ins, they don't really talk about the Bennett Belles, even though they had a large part in like that happening. So again, like even the story about like the Greensboro sit-ins is like a demonstration of like how patriarchy can function and like who gets to be a part of the story that is told because like yes it's great to tell the story but like there were lots of people that were a part of it that also tend to be left out so a book i would recommend if you are interested in learning more about the greensboro sit-ins is Belles of Liberty
00:23:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
gender, Bennett College, and the Civil Rights Movement in Greensboro, North Carolina by Linda Beatrice Brown. Yeah, I'm not going to go too deep into these books because they aren't the folk necessarily the focus of this episode, but I do want to give you like materials if you're interested in like you know learning this. And of course, you know I will have my syllabus available to y'all at some point, probably by the end of the season. So that is the Greensboro sit-ins.
The Greensboro Massacre and Its Aftermath
00:23:34
Books, BBQ & Black History
Next thing I want to talk about, Black North Carolina event, is the Greensboro Massacre.
00:23:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
So yeah, so a little context about the Greensboro massacre. On November 3rd, 1979, the community of Greensboro, North Carolina was thrown into shock and confusion. On this date, there was a clash between the Communist Workers' Party and the members of the Ku club ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party in the Morningside Homes community during a death to the Klan demonstration.
00:24:04
Books, BBQ & Black History
This event resulted in the deaths of Cesar Cauce Michael Ronald Nathan, M.D., William Sampson, Sandra Neely Smith, who was a student and SGA president of Bennett College, and James Waller, M.D. Four television crews captured the killings on film. Nevertheless, the perpetrators, members of the American Nazi Party, and the Ku Klux Klan were twice acquitted of any wrongdoing in state and federal courts.
00:24:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
A civil trial in 1985 eventually found the Greensboro Police Department and members of the Nazi Party and Ku Klux Klan jointly liable in the death of one activist. The city of Greensboro paid a $351,000 settlement to the survivors of the tragedy, but it never fully acknowledged nor apologized for its role. A full accounting of the relevant factors of this well-documented tragedy has not yet been entered into the public record and public consciousness.
00:25:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
And this background comes from the Beloved Community Center. So let me tell you about the Beloved Community Center because I'm so excited to share this. So among the organizations involved in commemorating and maintaining the legacy of the Greensboro Massacre are the Beloved Community Center and Faith Community Church, both affiliated with the Greensboro Massacre survivor, Reverend Nelson Johnson and his wife, Joyce Johnson.
00:25:33
Books, BBQ & Black History
The Beloved Community Center was founded in 1991 and still serves as an organization supporting progressive causes today, including the contemporary North Carolina truth, justice and reconciliation process, an initiative modeled after the Greensboro truth and reconciliation process. Faith Community Church is also still operating today.
00:25:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
so A little bit more background, then we'll get kind of into this. So in an attempt to place this incident within a broader social context, in an attempt to restore it and to attempt restorative justice in this matter, the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed.
00:26:15
Books, BBQ & Black History
Seven people nominated by the community formed an independent panel comprised of members of diverse racial and economic groups. They were sworn in June 12, 2004 in Greensboro, North Carolina as the nation's first Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission published their results in May 2006.
00:26:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
This final report recounts their findings, suggests institutional reforms, civil remedies, and strong civic engagement in the future to heal the deep divides of distrust and skepticism in our community. And this all comes from the beloved community center's website. So I would reckon, and yeah, I'm gonna use that, but I would actually reckon that a lot of people are probably not familiar with the Greensboro Massacre It is, again, one of those pieces of history that we don't really get a lot of information about.
00:27:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
How I learned about it was Black organizers in Greensboro and actually but visiting the Beloved Community Center and Faith Community Church in Greensboro.
00:27:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
It's really something to be said about like when you are in these really historical spaces Black spaces that have like documented like the history i'm going to share you know some pictures and stuff that i have from like being in that space but like it's like a museum it's basically like a museum of like the Greensboro massacre or a memorial, I would say. I think it's a better description of it. But like just learning about that event and learning about like the Greensboro Police Department working with the KKK and the Nazis, I was not surprised, I would say that. But like it just, again, drives home that like North Carolina like has these things you know with white supremacy have always been here. And I really, you know, part of sharing that particular story was also about the Beloved Community Center because that space is probably one of the most, what's the word I'm looking for, is probably one of the most
00:28:43
Books, BBQ & Black History
impactful spaces I've kind of had the pleasure to like be in and i don't know, like I know I'm concentrating on this, but like, it's such a significant like learning experience to like be in a space and like learn from, you know, people who have like this sort of historic knowledge. And like, there are a lot of like organizers who come out of the beloved community center.
00:29:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
it is very much a a really, i would say a really important like Black history, you know, space to also know about or just knowing the history behind them and all of that.
00:29:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
I just think that knowing, you know, about like the things that they have done, it's just like really important. But anyway, so,
00:29:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
the Beloved Community Center and Faith Community Church, another thing I learned, like kind of being in that space was about the Truth and Reconciliation Council, where, you know, this was basically people getting together to
00:29:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
address like the violence that people like kind of glossed over because if you living in a city where the police department in your city conspired with Nazis and the KKK,
00:30:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
and like kill people for like pro, cause I want to say it was like a protest against the Klan. So they came out and like killed people and harmed them, caught it on video. That's why the conversations again about, you know, body cameras are interesting because like they had news crews there.
00:30:24
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like, so they had news crews there who saw all of this and people did not go to jail. And that settlement they gave them was like nothing because like, look at all the lives lost. And so this event happens. Nobody learns about it.
00:30:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
And now that, you know, people when it does get you know brought up back again, you know, people don't really want to acknowledge the, you know, the impact of that. So like the Truth and Reconciliation Council, that's also like, or I'm sorry, commission is also what I would consider a pretty big deal because like, like I said, this is the first one that ever happened in the United States. And it's modeled after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after, you know, with apartheid. And you can actually go find the report. The report is actually pretty good, if I say so. They gave like really, really great you know suggestions about like what the city could actually, what could be done to i address the harm you know that had been caused to different communities. Has Greensboro, you know, meant that?
00:31:34
Books, BBQ & Black History
Absolutely not. if you know their new police chief hire says a lot about where they're at. So like, really, a lot of stuff hasn't changed, I would say.
00:31:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
But it is important, I guess, to note that like there have always been these people pushing back again against this violence you know that white supremacy produces.
Systemic Issues in the Criminal Justice System
00:31:58
Books, BBQ & Black History
So a little bit more about kind of the impact on me and the sociological relevance is that you know learning about this helped me to, again, really understand that white supremacy is a system passed down from generation to generation to uphold these you know very unnatural hierarchies.
00:32:16
Books, BBQ & Black History
And it has it also kind of demonstrates that police have always worked with white supremacists, but like police are derived from slave patrols. But again, we get into crime, we'll get into that more deeply. But like it really shows the collusion between like these systems you know within our society and you know white supremacy. And this is something that also informs my understanding of like the criminal justice system's purpose, because understanding that the police originated with slave catching, that the 13th amendment made slavery, you know, it abolished slavery, except for if you committed a crime. It's just, again, demonstrating that point that it is an extension of slavery. So the system works exactly, exactly how it is supposed to. So all these things you you see that you feel like are unfair, That's literally how it was built to be because those systems were not built to give rules to everybody. They were meant to give rules to some people, primarily Black people or really just non-white people in general.
00:33:19
Books, BBQ & Black History
But being able to... visit places like the Beloved Community Center and Faith faith Community Church, just remind me that, and like being able to see all these photos, books and documentation of the Greensboro Massacre is a reminder that the things that I you know am learning about, that we're talking about, these are not just abstract ideas, but like these are real things that have actually happened that are again just being erased you know from our history so we don't get to like learn from them so a couple of books I would recommend if you were interested in learning more about the Greensboro massacre through survivors eyes from the 60s to the Greensboro massacre
00:34:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
Learning from Greensboro, Truth and Reconciliation in the U.S. Those are two books that I would recommend for that particular event. So next event I would like to talk about, and this will be the last one before I jump into like some Black historic black North Carolina historical
The Wilmington Massacre: A White Supremacist Coup
00:34:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
figures. But another thing I want to talk about is and it is another massacre. So I'm sorry I'm focusing on massacres, but these these two that I'm talking about are just very important. So i want to talk about the Wilmington Massacre.
00:34:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
So a little background about it before I get into unpacking it. So 1897, North Carolina's Democratic Party, not the Democratic Party of today, please, I don't even want to get into that, decided to embark on a white supremacy campaign to try to drive the populace and Republican politicians out of office during the 1898 election. The campaign used speeches, propaganda cartoons, and the threat of violence to create support for white supremacy.
00:35:11
Books, BBQ & Black History
On November 1898, the New Hanover County's Democrats used threats and intimidation to stop African Americans from voting. Pro-Democratic Party election officers tampered with the returns. Because of these tactics, Democrats swept the election.
00:35:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
On November 10th, 1898, two days after the contested election, a mob of armed white men marched to the office of the Daily Record, the local African American newspaper, and set it on fire.
00:35:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
After burning the daily record offices, a violent mob then took to the streets and on the north side of town attacked African-Americans. An unknown number of African-Americans were murdered.
00:35:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
Other people, white and black, were banished from the city. On the same day, local elected officials were forced to resign and were replaced with by white supremacist leaders.
00:36:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
Once generally referred to as a riot, these events are now more widely understood to have been a white supremacist massacre and a coup d'etat. This comes from Cape Fear Museum. so I'm gonna share a little bit more context about this and then we'll talk more about this event. So the whites and this comes from the Zen Education Project, this part I'm sharing now.
00:36:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
The white supremacist used an editor editorial by Alex Manley, the editor of Wilmington's black newspaper, The Daily Record, to store stir a firestorm at the time of the elections. The editorial responded to a speech by Georgia socialite who promoted lynching as a method to protect women's dearest possession from the ravening human beast. And that's a quote.
00:36:47
Books, BBQ & Black History
Manley condemned lynching and pointed out the hypocrisy of describing black men as big, burly black brutes when in reality it was white men who regularly raped black women with impunity. He added that some relations between the races were consensual.
00:37:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
White supremacist rallies kept white outrage at the at the editorial at a fever pitch. former Confederate Colonel Alfred Waddell gave a speech suggesting that white citizens should choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses, if necessary, to keep African Americans from the polls.
00:37:21
Books, BBQ & Black History
Whew, man. So how I learned about this before I yeah get into it. I learned about the Wilmington massacre when I was in graduate school from one of my black classmates who, if I'm not mistaken, was from Wilmington, who told me about it.
00:37:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
So I was an adult when I learned about it and everything else I've learned about it has been from like my own research and. i think.
00:37:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
of a lot of the Black history I've learned about North Carolina, this is probably one of the most astounding things I actually think that we haven't learned about because I don't even think this is like important for like learning in North Carolina. I think it's like a national thing that people should know. So importance of the Wilmington Massacre or yeah, Wilmington massacre, the Wilmington coup. is First of all, it was the only successful coup in American history, insurrection, whatever you want to call it. But it was basically a coup of white supremacists overthrowing a democratically elected government because they didn't like that Black people were there.
00:38:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
That's really what it always comes down to. They don't like Black people. And so you know, they overthrew them and like, you know, took over. And out of that actually came
00:38:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
like Jim Crow. Like that was like the, the I don't wanna say is the creation of Jim Crow, but it created like a framework for white supremacists to like use to kind of do this in other places. And so,
00:39:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
North Carolina, like I said, was the place where we kind of get that framework from, you know, with the Wilmington massacre. And I, again, would like to point out, like, part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this one specifically is because, as again, a social scientist, what this shows me is how effective censorship is. I grew up in Eastern North Carolina. And I had never heard about the Wilmington massacre.
00:39:43
Books, BBQ & Black History
And again, i learned about it in graduate school, not through the curriculum, through a conversation with somebody. And that for me is like wild. So like I teach about that now because, and and nobody, and I would say very few people that I teach actually are aware of this event, even if they are from North Carolina.
00:40:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
So like, having that sort of information like left out of the conversation is like so interesting i would say and some more context kind of about that i learned again like doing more research once i looked into the wilmington massacre i was like well want learn about the black people there and like one of the things they were really big on was education was education and
00:40:33
Books, BBQ & Black History
One thing I know about white supremacy, white supremacy don't like literacy. White supremacy don't like people learning, it but I'll get into that. But like, that was really important in, you know, talking kind of about the Wilmington coup, because like the Black people in Wilmington before the coup actually had a very robust,
00:40:56
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like educational system. They were like really educating like, you know, the Black children, the Black community. And again, white supremacists did not like that.
00:41:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
Anytime historically Black people make progress white people get violent with the government support and that's to uphold the white supremacist hierarchy because remember white people supposed to be at the top Black people at the bottom so if Black people ever rise up above where they are supposed to be it's shutting everything down and I would argue that's what we're seeing today in society is is the the reaffirming of like white supremacy. and And I feel like at this point, if you do not see that,
00:41:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
this probably ain't the space for you because it's there. It's been there and they're they're making it like very, very obvious. It also showed how North Carolina is really, really relevant in conversations about white supremacy and civil rights in the United States. So it is very, very important, again, to kind of know these things so we understand kind of how they show up, you know, today.
00:42:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
A relevant book to learn more about the Wilmington massacre, if you are interested, is We Have Taken a City. The Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898 by H. Leon Prather Sr. So that is the Wilmington Massacre.
00:42:28
Books, BBQ & Black History
Now I'm going to get into some Black North Carolina historical figures that I've learned about.
Pioneering Black Figures: Anna Julia Cooper and Pauli Murray
00:42:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
And going to talk a little bit about where they are from in North Carolina or what is their connection North Carolina, a little bit about their background,
00:42:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
how they contributed to the world, how I learned about them, and why i would say like how they informed like my sociology and myself and of course a recommendation for a book if I have it.
00:43:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
So the first person I want to talk about is Anna Julia Cooper. So Anna Julia Cooper was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1858 to Hannah Stanley. It is believed that she was the daughter of her enslaver, Fabius J. Haywood. Cooper was emancipated when she was nine years old and in 1867 enrolled in St. Augustine's Normal and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau. And this comes from the North Carolina History Project and NCpedia. NCpedia is also linked on my website if you ever want to learn more about North Carolina.
00:43:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
A little more background about Anna Julia Cooper. at St. Augustine's, Cooper noticed that her male classmates received more rigorous coursework than the female students. She successfully advocated for equal academic opportunities. and excelled in her studies. By the age of 10, she was tutoring her peers in mathematics, earning $100 a year for her work. So that's a little of her background. So what is her contribution kind of to the world? Why Anna Julie Cooper relevant? So Cooper published her first book, A Voice from the South by a Black woman of the South in 1892. In addition to calling for equal education for women, a voice from the South advanced Cooper's assertion that educated African-American women were necessary for the uplifting of the entire Black race. The book of essays gained national attention and she began to do lectures across the country on topics around education, civil rights, and the status of Black women.
00:44:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
In 1902, she began a controversial stint as a principal of M Street High School. The White Washington, D.C. School Board disagreed with her educational approach for Black students, with folk which focused on college prep, and she resigned in 1906. Cooper also established and co-founded several organizations to promote Black civil rights causes. She helped found the Colored Women's League in 1892.
00:45:05
Books, BBQ & Black History
Let me see. She joined the Executive Committee of the first Pan-African Conference in the nineteen hundreds Let me see. She created, let me see. Since the Young Women's Christian Association and the Young Men's Christian Association did not accept African American members, she created colored branches to provide support for young Black migrants moving from the South into Washington, D.C.
00:45:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
So I should also say Anna Julia Cooper is a sociologist, which is why she absolutely was included on this. How I learned about her kind of through sociology, but really through my own research, my own, yeah, my own research and just like my general interest in like you know, black women thinkers, you know, I'm just very interested in that. So learning about Anna Julia Cooper, from North Carolina, like one, the fact that i had to go out and find out about her outside of like a school system is wild because she literally was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and she's a sociologist. So like to not have her included in like a curriculum is wild.
00:46:19
Books, BBQ & Black History
But learning about her existence and the fact that she's from North Carolina really shows how Black folks have been theorizing about the world that they live in for like years. So like I'm calling her a sociologist, but i don't know that that's what she would have named herself, but that's what her work is, is sociology. it she described intersectional identities before the word existed so I really like that she was able to talk about you know how gender and sex not gender and sex but gender and race create like unique experiences because she noticed you know she was being treated differently you know in blacks even in Black spaces around men like she was you know treated as a lesser man and you know she was talking about that and
00:47:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
yeah i mean like having those experiences like articulated is just like at least for me like really really powerful she also reminds me that social theory can become action so it wasn't that she was just like writing about these things she was also like doing stuff about it so like and i love that she really you know focused on like education because i think of myself as like someone like that as well because she didn't just get her education and say like, I got mine, let me take care of my family. It was literally like, let me go out and pull you know other Black people with me. Let me go but out and like create these opportunities. And I think that that is like you know the spirit of what I consider like a Black liberatory sociologist. She didn't just get her education for herself, she advocated for others as well. And the book I would recommend if you want to learn more about Anna Julia Cooper is the one she wrote herself. called A Voice from the South, I would highly recommend reading that. So that's Anna Julia Cooper. Next person I want to talk about is Pauli Murray. So a little bit of background and where Pauli is from. So Pauli Murray is a lawyer, professor, writer, outspoken civil and gender rights activist and Episcopal priest who was born in Baltimore.
00:48:32
Books, BBQ & Black History
However, When she, he, they were were three years old, Pauli mother died and as and Pauli went to live with their aunt and not namesake, Pauline Fitzgerald Dame of Durham, North Carolina.
00:48:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
Pauli graduated at 16 from segregated Hillside High as a valedictorian. Let me see. I'll just read in to see what stuff I will include in this because some of this is...
00:49:08
Books, BBQ & Black History
extra for right now. So in 1938, she applied to the University of North Carolina to study sociology. Pauli's application was against state law, which required separate but equal institutions and garnered national attention. Pauli's unsuccessful campaign for admission was the first time they experienced what they later summarized in saying that, oh, that one woman with a typewriter constitutes a movement.
00:49:38
Books, BBQ & Black History
Despite having served time for refusing to sit at the back of the bus in Virginia, Murray was admitted to Howard Law School in 1941, where she experienced discrimination due to her gender rather than her race. When awarded a fellowship to pursue advanced legal age education, she was rejected by Harvard because of her gender.
00:49:59
Books, BBQ & Black History
Later, Polly would wonder which was the bigger obstacle to to her legal career, race, or gender. Murray self-described as he-she personality in correspondence with family members. For years, Murray requested and was denied testosterone injections and hormone therapy, as well as exploratory surgery to investigate their reproductive organs. we're Referring to Pauli, center interchangeably uses she, her, hers,
00:50:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
he, him, his, and they, them, theirs pronouns. And this comes from ACLU North Carolina and the Pauli Murray Center. Pauli's contributions and relevancy.
00:50:40
Books, BBQ & Black History
Pauli was the first Black person to earn a a JSD, which is a Doctor of the Science of Law degree from Yale Law School. Pauli is a founder of the National Organization for Women, the first Black person perceived as a woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Pauli Murray's legal arguments and interpretation of the US Constitution were winning strategies for public school desegregation, women's rights in the workplace, an extension of rights to LGBTQI people based on title, what is this?
00:51:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
Seven of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And that comes from the Pauli Murray Center. And how did I learn from this? A history teacher gave me a book about Pauli as an adult.
00:51:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
I was actually out of graduate school at this point. So I learned about Pauli like outside of, again, the academy. And
00:51:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
yeah, like even having to learn about her outside of Again, like curriculum is just wild because of like all those contributions. Also consider learning about poly relevant because I learned about the concept of Jane Crow. So we might have heard of Jim Crow, but maybe not Jane Crow. so
00:52:09
Books, BBQ & Black History
Jane Crow is this comes from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Polly Murray published a landmark article in the George Washington Law Review entitled Jane Crow and the Law Sex Discrimination in Title VII where she explains how certain legal statutes meant to protect the rights of and so civil rights of Americans still limited the scopes of liberty afforded to women.
00:52:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
And Oh, I just love that there's a concept for this because again, it is demonstrating how gender is a identity that is also marginalized because recognizing that even the the way that like civil rights laws were written, you know, to to give people a racial groups more equality, and I say that very loosely, the fact that gender, you know, got left out of the conversation is also part of the conversation because there are different, you know, gendered experiences.
00:53:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
And also want to say, like, you notice I've been going back and forth in the, you know, pronouns I'm using for Polly because that was kind of the understanding is that, you know, Polly was a part of the Black LGBTQIA community.
00:53:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
And, you know, sometimes people don't even have language, you know, again, for who they see themselves to be, especially i can imagine like during that time, you know, in the United States, how hard it would have been. But like, it is again that reminder that like,
00:53:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
Black queer people and trans people have existed forever, forever, and they will always be here, you know, no matter what. But to erase their contributions from history, I think also...
00:54:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
you know, robs us of like their brilliance as well. Cause I'm just like, did you hear the list of what, you know, Pauly did? School, public school desegregation, women's rights in the workplace, extension of rights to LGBTQIA people. That's a big deal.
00:54:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
Like that matters. And the fact that we don't learn about it, like I said, to me is a massive you know failure of you know the system or you know if we really reframe that, is the system doing what it's meant to do? This is all, Polly's also relevant to me because it is also a reminder for me that a lack of gender analysis will always produce a gap in a person's ability to think critically.
00:54:52
Books, BBQ & Black History
race and gender and lots of other identities exist simultaneously. They exist simultaneously. Pauly literally talked about being at UNC University of North Carolina, being denied denied admission for, you know, their race and being a denied admission at Harvard for their gender.
00:55:12
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I'm just like, You know, that again is a really great example of, you know, intersectional identity and how that produces like unique, you know, sorts of experiences. And when I say that, like not having a gender analysis produces a gap in your knowledge, if if you like, yeah I don't even want really get too deep into that, but like, if you can't acknowledge that there are other ways that people can be oppressed, then like, it's really going to be hard for for you to learn, you know, about other groups of people.
00:55:48
Books, BBQ & Black History
Because again, you're we're not just Black, we're Black and, you know, a lot of other things. And so like, even for me and the the work that I do, one of my really big things is like, I'm at a point in my life where I don't, you know, debate people about like a lot of this stuff. I really don't like to call myself an expert because i am always like learning stuff, but I for sure have expertise in things. And, you know, gender is one of those spaces I have a lot of expertise. So like, you know, not being able to recognize that patriarchy is like actually a system and not being able to recognize like how it influences people or influences like behaviors is something that like,
00:56:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
it's hard for me to like hold conversations with. But anyway, I digress. Pauli is also a reminder that Black, again, that Black queer and trans people have always been a part of history and central to Black li liberation movements, even in North Carolina.
00:56:53
Books, BBQ & Black History
And again, it also shows that even within my own field of sociology, white supremacy is present. And it's wild because I wanted to go to you know Chapel Hill at one point, but like learning all these connections that it has, and like even seeing what it's doing today, like look them up in the news. But yeah. Relevant books to learn more about Pauli Murray that I would recommend would be Song in a Weary Throat, An American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray, and Jane Crowe, The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg.
00:57:27
Books, BBQ & Black History
Last person I am going to talk about is Harriet Jacobs.
Harriet Jacobs' Life and Resistance
00:57:33
Books, BBQ & Black History
So who is Harriet Jacobs? Harriet Jacobs is a former North Carolina slave turned abolitionist and I'll share that other part in a little while. Harriet Jacobs was born in bondage between 1813 and 1815 in Edenton, North Carolina. Her father was a white farmer and her mother was mulatto house slave. After her mother died, Jacobs lived with her mother's owner's wife.
00:58:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
And soon after she died, Jacobs was willed to a five-year-old relative. In the child's stead, Dr. James Norcom acted as her owner.
00:58:13
Books, BBQ & Black History
Although her early childhood was by her reckoning pleasant, it wasn't long before she attracted the desire of the man who kept her enslaved. The doctor harassed teenage Jacobs and persistently asked in various ways for her to have sex with him.
00:58:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
she refused his request, she refused, shit I'm sorry, Norcom refused Jacobs' request to marry a free black man and continued harassing her. As a form of slave resistance, Jacobs soon befriended a young white lawyer, became sexually involved with him, formed a consensual relationship with him, and eventually gave birth to two children. A slave's child's status was dependent on that of his or her mother. She spurned Norcombe's intentions as long as she could, marrying and having children with another man before the pressure got too great and she had to go into hiding.
00:59:07
Books, BBQ & Black History
So for seven long years in Edenton, Harriet Jacobs hid in the tiny attic of the house. The space was approximately nine feet long by seven feet wide. It's where her st children stayed, being raised by another woman. And throughout this time, Harriet Jacobs watched her children grow through tiny cracks in the ceiling, concealing herself from them and nearly everyone else for fear of the man who continued searching for her throughout this time. After seven years, she was able to escape north and she escaped through the Underground Railroad and made the perilous journey north.
00:59:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
she ended up when she fled northward, she ended up working as an abolitionist with Frederick Douglass. and who else with abolitionist Amy Post and joined the anti-slavery society and ended up writing one of the most important slave narratives in American history.
01:00:05
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I'll share more about Harriet Jacobs in a moment. So how did I learn about Harriet Jacobs, my master's thesis in graduate school? I was doing research on sexual violence against black women and I learned about Harriet Jacobs.
01:00:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I will, I know being like, you know, funny with this, but I will revisit a little bit more about Harriet Jacobs in a moment. So now i'm to the point where i want to talk a little bit about why it's important for Black people to know where they live, why this, you know, stuff is relevant.
Recognizing Patterns of Oppression and Resistance
01:00:41
Books, BBQ & Black History
First reason is because the tactics of oppression are recycled.
01:00:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
Everything that is happening today to any marginalized group has already been done to Black Americans. you know, our enslaved ancestors. The police have always conspired with white supremacists because they literally were born of white supremacy. So I would actually say, is it really conspiring if they're the same?
01:01:05
Books, BBQ & Black History
There have always been attacks on education and voting rights. The censorship and propaganda has always been there. And, you know, it's really interesting because I'm like, who's really violent? White supremacists present in every piece of this history that I have shared with you about Black people.
01:01:26
Books, BBQ & Black History
have been violent in like every story and in all these stories all Black people want to do is like just live their lives and for some reason you know white supremacists won't let them and they use all of again these tactics of oppression you know, to create like these really bad circumstances for Black people. Also important for Black people to know where they live because there are lots of like actual strategies to resist white supremacy. Our ancestors did not just get their rights again by voting, like,
01:02:00
Books, BBQ & Black History
they were doing stuff. They was in the streets. Like they were like doing things and I ain't even getting to like the super radical things. I'm just, you know, talking about some of this stuff right now. But, you know, literacy literacy, literacy, literacy, like, you know,
01:02:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
I cannot emphasize how important it is for people to like read and might have critical thinking skills and might understand. a lot of this information, stuff again that I've learned is hidden in books and it's perfect and and or you know certain things are purposely removed from the stories we are told.
01:02:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
Almost all the information about the Black history, of Black North Carolina history I shared in this episode is something I learned outside of the classroom. And if I did learn it inside the classroom, it was because I chose to learn about it for the most part. And, you know, that to me presents as a problem. It means that we really got to do a better job of maintaining our own history, because that's also something I kind of came across was like, as I've been doing, because I do like a lot of, I like to read just in general, but like, as I've been doing like more and more intentional research about like Black North Carolina history, a lot of this stuff is written by white people.
01:03:14
Books, BBQ & Black History
And to me, that's kind of wild, you know, just as someone who, you know, also teaches because I'm like, to have to, the people who have access to the most primary resources about Black history are also people that are not Black.
01:03:34
Books, BBQ & Black History
And I, you know, it it really bothers me that like, we, there are so many people and like, not to say like, there aren't white people that are like, you know, telling fair versions and like you know good don't say good but like whose books i don't mind reading because i know they're giving respect to what they're writing about but the fact is that like we don't get a lot of stories like from ourselves which is why i think it's so important for us to be you know curious about you know where we live and like white people should not have more access to our stories than we do
01:04:10
Books, BBQ & Black History
And again, a lot of the stuff I learned are things i had to go out and learn about myself. like And I had to be curious about it to you know get out that and that information. But yeah, but like in in doing all of that, what I would say is like every single thing I've read historically has talked about literacy. Even the, what was it? the The slave narratives that I was reading like before, literally he was talking about wanting to learn how to read. so like it's important. That's what I'll say. Another strategy to resist white supremacy is ancestor veneration. And this is kind of like what I'm talking about, passing down the stories, like even within your own family about, you know, what has happened, like just any sort of history, like that's really, really, really important. Because like, even, you know,
01:05:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
one day. I keep saying this for a lot of stuff, but when I do do the episode, you know, about religion, one of the things I'm going to talk about is about like how ancestor veneration, when I use this concept, it means like showing respect and homage, you know, to our ancestors. That's a really big part of like, you know, pre-colonial like African spiritual practices that we are told, you know, are not good. But you know ancestor veneration is really, really important to resisting you know white supremacy because part of ancestor veneration is like learning from you know the people in the past and you know honoring them. So like even you know as I am sharing these stories about you know Anna Julia Cooper, Harriet Jacobs, Pauli Murray, this to me is a way of like ancestor veneration because like
01:05:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
their lives live on past them you know with their words. That's kind of how I think about it and the work that they've done. So yeah, ancestor veneration, I feel like is really important strategy strategy to resisting white supremacy. And also, and I'll just say this real quickly and I'll leave it at that, but violence was also a tactic that was used to resist white supremacy. Like, you know, Black people are not just letting white people just or white supremacists just do whatever to them. i Like that is like actually a myth, which is why, again, it's so important for people to understand like the totality of how resistance actually happened.
01:06:37
Books, BBQ & Black History
Also important for Black people to know where they live because who is left out tells the real story. Like my work like as a social scientist is led by the overarching question of like who is missing from the story and why. Whenever I'm doing like any sort of like research or any sort of study like that is, that is like the question that leads to whatever I'm like exploring. Pauli Murray,
01:07:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
Anna Julie Cooper, Harriet Jacobs all demonstrate to me in different ways the importance of you know recognizing gender oppression within the Black community and why it's really important for like those stories to also be told by the people who you know experience them. so leaving, you know, these people out of like the Black historical, like canon, is again, kind of reaffirming, like patriarchy is like a natural thing as if like, we don't have other people within our community that also are leaders that are also, you know, assertive that are also, you know, engaging in this like really, important liberatory, you know, civil rights work.
01:07:49
Books, BBQ & Black History
The Greensboro and Wilmington massacres, those stories for me demonstrate the history of white supremacists colluding with state, local, and federal authorities to engage in white supremacist terrorism. These stories aren't told because the violence in the systems of white supremacy and cis-heteropatriarchy is required. to sustain them, but you can't really say that. You're not supposed to say that. And when you tell these stories of all this violence, it kind of reiterates the violence that, the level of violence that the had to be maintained to like create this illusion of this hierarchy being normal.
01:08:25
Books, BBQ & Black History
Also find it interesting when we're talking about who's left out the real story. It's just very interesting to me that Black people are considered violent when history, current events and research indicates that white people are the most racial most violent racial group and it's really not even close. But when you actually get have power you know under a society where the system is built around you having that power, it gets easy to shape the stories of the history that is shared. So this fact you know becomes easier to hide.
01:08:58
Books, BBQ & Black History
So yeah, so those are the reasons I think that Black people need to know where they live.
The Black Panther Party in Winston-Salem
01:09:02
Books, BBQ & Black History
So my interesting fact that I learned as a sociologist, is another black, of course, you know about North Carolina, is that Winston-Salem, North Carolina is actually the first city in the South with a chapter of the Black Panther Party.
01:09:17
Books, BBQ & Black History
So in 1969, Winston-Salem became the first Southern city to establish a chapter of the Black Panther Party on the state, local national level. The chief purpose of the Black Panther Party was to protect African-American neighborhoods from police brutality and other forms of oppression. The founding members included Larry Little, Nelson Malloy, Cynthia Norwood, Brad Lilly, and Hazel Mack. And this comes from the Winston Salem Chronicle and the Forsyth County Historic Resources Commission.
01:09:51
Books, BBQ & Black History
Some of the things that, let me see, that the chapter did were, let me see, in Winston-Salem 1977, the Winston-Salem chapter launched several survival programs. These programs serve to advance the group's mission to put shoes on the people's feet, put food food in people's stomachs, and put clothes on people's backs. So this included providing free breakfasts for poor children before school, giving away free clothes and shoes to those in need of them, spraying homes for pest control, screening for sickle cell anemia, registering people to vote, operating a free around-the-clock ambulance service for residents who could not afford to pay the county's fee.
01:10:36
Books, BBQ & Black History
And
01:10:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
trying to think of how much more to share. So I'll just stop there because we already going. But I find this really interesting you know for me as a you know just someone who loves to research, just loves to learn learns learn history and all that. But this is a really interesting to me because one, some of these individuals, some of these Black Panthers are actually like still alive.
01:11:06
Books, BBQ & Black History
And this is another you know demonstration for me that we've always been protecting our own communities and providing you know solutions you know for systems to sustain ourselves forever. And that history is just like hidden, so it makes it seem like we have never created things when all the things that we created generally are either co-opted or destroyed you know by the state. So like even learning you know that, and again, like learning that the first, you know again, Black Panther Party is not only in the South, was not only in North Carolina, but like in Winston-Salem is just like cool.
01:11:47
Books, BBQ & Black History
you want to If you want to learn more about this, you can check out Tressie McMillan Cottoms', another sociologist documentary about the Winston-Salem chapter of the Black Panther Party called Power to the People, y'all. So that would be my recommendation. So now I'm going to talk about the book of the day. So the excerpt of the day actually comes from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. So of course I had to choose somebody from today, you know, for the excerpt. That just makes sense, right? So the excerpt that I chose, Jacobs talk talks about how living in the cramped attic was unbearable, made her sick. But she would still rather hide in the attic than be subjected to the life of an enslaved girl or woman.
01:12:35
Books, BBQ & Black History
She noted two separate incidents where she saw from her hiding place where a young enslaved woman was being chased by two men and died by suicide instead of being tortured and degraded. Another incident involved an enslaved woman who was assaulted by a slave owner and and how yeah and how she was treated poorly by the slave owner's wife who made sure her and her baby were put out and sold to another enslaver. Jacobs also noted the hypocrisy in her having to hide because the law allowed the doctor that we talked about at beginning to assault her with no recourse, but she had to hide to protect herself and her children when she committed no crime other than being an enslaved person who wanted autonomy of their own body.
01:13:18
Books, BBQ & Black History
This book incidents in the life of a slave girl is an autobiography of harriet jacobs life where she documents her personal experiences an enslaved woman this autobiography was published in 1861 at the start of the civil war under the pseudonym linda brent and yeah so that's a little bit you know more about we've already talked about harriet you know jacobs a little bit so i'm just adding a little bit more you know to that
01:13:46
Books, BBQ & Black History
But yeah, like, you know, clearly I chose this book because I talked about Harriet Jacobs in this episode, but like some of the reasons why I chose this book was, but were to read, you know, this excerpt from this book but was because Jacobs' book is a reminder of the racial and gender violence that is central to upholding the white supremacist hierarchy.
01:14:11
Books, BBQ & Black History
Slavery and the sexual violence that was used to maintain it has literally built the foundation for the the United States as demonstrated by Harriet Jacobs' account. This story was also very, very reminiscent of Anne Frank hiding in the attic.
01:14:28
Books, BBQ & Black History
But Jacob's story was actually before Harriet, I'm sorry, was before Anne Frank's time and it happened right here in North Carolina. And, you know,
01:14:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
again, the fact that I learned about Harriet Jacobs in like graduate school and like she wrote, like I said, the first narrative of what it meant to be a Black a Black woman who was enslaved. And like, I'm not going to, you know, go too deep into like that story, but yes, it was just as bad as you would imagine that it was. Like, that book is a is it's a hard read i would say but like the things that she talked about it's just an indication like all the stuff that's going on in the government right now and again i hope one day that this stuff isn't true but like the legacy of like settler colonists and white supremacists is like
01:15:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
that of like sexual abuse of like children. Like that's just me keeping a real. But like, that is literally what they have been doing, you know, since forever. And is...
01:15:39
Books, BBQ & Black History
Her story is just a reiteration you know of that. And like when I read it, like one thing that she kept reiterating over and over is, I know you're not going to believe like you know this is true, but then today in 2026, I look at who the president is, and then I look at Harriet Jacobs' story and what she's saying about what she experienced as a child, and I'm like, no, I believe everything, everything that she's saying.
01:16:03
Books, BBQ & Black History
And, you know, Jacob's analysis of people who are racialized as white, who refuse to acknowledge the moral crimes that this country has committed and continues to commit, is why this story is not shared. Because you will be hard pressed not to read that story that Harriet Jacobs is telling and not look at everything that's going on today and not make those connections. And again, that is the purpose of like not sharing these sorts of stories. And would also note that something I thought about when I read this, when I read Jacob's book was that, you know, her story also challenges that idea of like, even in the Black community, when people talk about slavery and about like, you know, how slaves had it better and like field slaves like had it worse. Like a lot of what she talked about was about how,
01:16:56
Books, BBQ & Black History
She don't know if it it was good to to like have the attention you know of someone and like live in the house because if someone has power over you and you can't say no, there there is no consensual relationship. So like she was living in that attic for seven years because this man wanted her and she did not want him, but she had, she had no rights over herself. She had no rights over her body. And I think about that as a Black woman of like being the foundation of like Black women, not being allowed to be victims, which again goes into my research that I'll talk about in the next episode.
01:17:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
But yeah, but like all of this for me is just really reiterating that idea of the importance of like sharing our own stories as like Black people, And like really speaking truth to power because like once you know, like say something. That's, you know, kind of how I feel. But all right. So now we're we're getting to the end, y'all. I promise. I promise. So my inspirational Black quote for today reads, instructions for the journey.
01:17:58
Books, BBQ & Black History
to the people who can fly if you will only look back and see wings instead of burdens." And this quote is actually on the base of the Wilmington Coup Memorial sculpture that is on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. i actually have a photo of it that I took on my website Books, BBQ and Black History I'm sorry Books, BBQ, Black History dot com. I'll share it some pictures of it on my Instagram page as well.
01:18:29
Books, BBQ & Black History
And when I so I actually like saw this quote somewhere and was there somewhere I was at UNC Wilmington. I saw it on the campus because when you see it, you'll kind of understand. Like, if you know, UNC Wilmington, a very, very white school to see this monument like sitting there, i was like, wow, this feels very out of place. so I went and took a picture of it and I read the quote that was at the bottom like afterwards.
01:18:55
Books, BBQ & Black History
But after i you know saw that, I went to like figure out like where this, you know, sculpture, you know, essentially that I took a picture of where it came from. So this is what I found. So the piece that I took a picture of and that this quote is on was created by artist Dare Coulter. Coulter and UNC Wilmington unveiled it in 2021. And the sculpture is actually called Because It's Time. And it's designed to shed a light on the 1898 Wilmington massacre and coup a piece of history long hidden. And yeah, I can't wait for y'all to see it. it's
01:19:31
Books, BBQ & Black History
It's really beautiful. Yeah. But yeah, so the importance of this and why I chose this quote is because the massive amount of work that has been done to get Black people to forget who you know we are and where we come from, lets me know what kind of people my ancestors were dealing with and how powerful, you know, Black ancestors and Black people actually are, because we're we're so powerful that people don't even want us to learn about ourselves. We can't even learn about ourselves because that would be a threat to the people that don't want us to learn about ourselves. There's a reason that Harriet Jacobs, you know, Anna Julius Cooper's writings about the violence of white supremacy in their time explains the conditions we see today in 2006, even though, you know, these books were written over a hundred years ago.
01:20:22
Books, BBQ & Black History
There's a reason why we aren't taught about the Greensboro massacre or the or the Wilmington massacre or that members of the Winston-Salem Black Panther Party are still alive. Our history is filled with so much fighting back against white supremacy and supremacists, but the success of white supremacist propaganda and censorship is making people forget that.
01:20:42
Books, BBQ & Black History
Learning your own Black history, specifically from Black people, is one of the most powerful things that you can do. And white supremacists know this, which is why education is attacked and defunded within our society. And I'd actually argue that everything I discussed in this episode should be required you know, in all North Carolina school curriculums at minimum, but should also be nationally known. And, you know, for me, the fact that I had to learn this info outside of school and only because I intentionally wanted to learn it for me feels like, you know, a problem. And I only shared like some of the things I learned about Black North Carolina history. So please know that, you know, we'll keep building this out.
01:21:23
Books, BBQ & Black History
And i also realized that, you know, sometimes you have to be the one to tell your own story or others will create it for you. So even if I didn't learn reading, i don't consider, you know, learning Black history to be a burden. I think it can be hard to process the reality of what has been done to Black people in the name of white supremacy. But...
01:21:45
Books, BBQ & Black History
I also find solace in knowing that the work that I do and the politic that I practice aligns with Black people that I respect so much. And I love that I'm actually in a position to share this with people in the Black community who may not know all this information. But again, I'll remind you as I'm wrapping this episode up that I am not a historian, but I will continue to share, you know, the Black history and knowledge that I come across. So I hope you learned, you know, a little bit more about North Carolina today, specifically Black people in North Carolina. And I'm looking forward to continuing to learn with you. And as always, like, comment, and subscribe. Let me know what you think.