From being homeless, to having a father in prison, dealing with literacy issues, and a government who deliberately poisoned her community, nineteen-year-old Flint, Michigan, phenom rapper Armani G proves these pressures only made her a diamond in the ruff.
In the release of her first single Grew Up, teen phenom rapper Armani G takes her listeners on the saga of growing up as a young Black female in the Industrial Midwest.
The once world’s largest car company General Motors was founded in Flint, Michigan, in 1908. But like most of America’s Midwestern industrial towns and cities after World War II, their preeminence as the global powerhouse of durable goods has seen a wicked decline.
No longer does the nickname “The Industrial Midwest” carry any meaning as of 1990 to the end of 2007, the Industrial Midwest saw the deindustrialization of 800,000 jobs. Throw in the 2008 financial malfeasance and bailout of New York’s Wall Street, and another half-a-million jobs were lost from 2008-2010, as a result of the Great Recession. Others have put the job lost at 2-million since the Great Recession.
The aftermath of this kind of deindustrialization of middle class paying jobs saw every single Industrial Midwestern State lose a congressional seat according to the 2020 U.S. census. This kind of wholesale political loss of power is unprecedented in the United States.
Closed factories lead to close hope, and the Industrial Midwest was the epicenter of the opioid crisis. But these are the well written about stories of the region as a whole, but what doesn’t get written about is the region’s last to hire, first to fire, Black population. All across the Midwest, municipalities dealt with their new budget short falls by fining and feeing it’s Black residents. Other policies by Officialdom, like the policy to switch Flint, Michigan’s, drinking water supply, from Detroit’s water system to the poisonous Flint River, has one longtime Flint resident Rev. Ezra L. Tillman Jr. to state he’s not ready to embrace Covid-19 vaccines, “When you tell us that the water is safe but it really wasn’t, that relationship between leadership and the community is still damaged.”
The sad truth as indicated by the City of Flint, as of December 25, 2020, nine thousand nine hundred twelve lead pipes have been removed and supplanted. This is far less than the assessed 18,000 lead pipes in the city’s whole water framework. This is the true ongoing status of Flint, Michigan’s, attempt to solve a problem it created on the back of Black folks in 2014.
But again, these are the kinds of stories that get reported in the news, but who is reporting on the status of the Black girls of the Industrial Midwest? According to K-12 disciplinary data by the U.S. Department of Education in 2017, Midwestern Black girls faced a school suspension nearly double the rate of any other Black girls in the United States, when compared to their white counterparts. While much has been written about the school to prison pipeline by children impacted by an incarcerated parent, these studies rarely, if at all, look at these impacts from a regional standpoint.
HIP HOP’S STORYTELLING IMPACT ON BLIGHT.
Hip Hop emerged directly out of the living conditions in America’s inner cities in the 1970s.
For the uninitiated, early rappers were called news reporters. No mainstream American media outlet was reporting on the Hellish conditions America had allowed Her citizens to live under. Take these 1982 lyrics from The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Broken glass everywhere People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise Got no money to move out, I guess, I got no choice Rats in the front room, roaches in the back Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get far ‘Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car
Is that your life? Is this what you see when you wake up every morning? You may not, but people do. And these stories remind ourselves of our Faith based duty to take care of the least among us. Obviously we are not doing it, and for our corporate media hegemonies, reporting on crime, especially Black crime, is a sexier narrative than reporting on Black homelessness.
In Assistant Professor Tara L. Conley’s “Rust: A Black Woman’s Story of Growing Up in Northeast Ohio” | Medium, Conley tells a gripping story of being Black and female in the Midwest, “Black women I know from home have stories that often go unnoticed and untold,” she writes.
Teenage phenom rapper and Flint, Michigan, resident Armani G won’t let her life be a statistic. Fueled by the senseless Black on Black 2019 murder of her younger brother, and a health care system that failed her aunt in 2019, were the catalyst to spur her to pick up a pen, and to carry forward the Hip Hop dreams that her brother dreamt for himself. Her lyrics are poignant with the traumas of an American dream that is the moral equivalent of an American nightmare. Homelessness, an incarcerated father, bullying, and a rap lyric of her having PTSD that is delivered with so much passion, it makes the hairs on a person’s skin stand up.
Armani G in April of 2021 performing at the Crazy Atlanta in Atlanta, George. Sponsored by Coast2Coast Live who flew her in from Michigan, “It was my first performance. I entered a contest to compete in Miami for the grand prize. I competed against 34 other artists; they only chose five and I was one of the five people they chose. It was a good experience, shocked because it was my first performance. I felt like I did it before it was natural.”
In 2019, rap superstar Cardi B blasted on Instagram that it was the purview of Hip Hop bloggers, journalists, and magazines to elevate the voices of female rappers with the kind of rap lyrics she and others were being criticized for not rapping. Cardi B is a huge fan of all female rappers, and vehemently argues it is disingenuous of the High Priests and Priestesses of both Hip Hop and Black culture to hold negative opinions about WAP (Wet Ass Pussy), while blocking through their distribution channels, the female rappers who want the world to see not their bodies, but the world that they see, through the eyes of a Black female in America.
On Wednesday, February 19th, 2020, at the national headquarters of All of Us or None, in Oakland, California, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., will be a campaign to Free All Hunger Strike Representatives and Promote the Prisoner Human Rights Movement! This event is the first of 12 performances which will highlight the work of former prisoner, Minister King X. The aim of the event is to educate participants and to bring to light, issues concerning this particular Class of Tortured Prisoners having suffered decades of Solitary Confinement. We will learn about their extraordinary effort to end CDCR’s tactic of indefinite solitary confinement through peaceful protest hunger strikes, and the authoring of what could be considered the most important document of the past 30 years, the Agreement to End Hostilities.
Susan Burton; Released 1987
Susan Burton’s life spiraled out of control after her five-year-old son was struck by a police car and killed. She would eventually turn to drugs to cope. This led her onto a downward path of an addict’s life, incarceration, reincarceration, incarceration, reincarceration. Burton attributes her turn around to a court that sent her to a rehabilitation facility in a more affluent part of Los Angeles. Compared to the rehabilitative services she had been receiving in the less influential parts of the county; here, she was being pampered and treated like a queen. This was crucial, to raising her confidence and self-esteem. Eventually, she would save $12,000 to buy a bungalow in South Central Los Angeles. This was in a rough neighborhood. Staying sober was one thing. Finding support was another. When she tried to sign up for a program to become a licensed home care aide, she found out that a felony conviction meant she could never earn a license in the field. Virtually all the resources an addict would need to keep clean and out of jail, food stamps, housing assistance, easy employment access, were out of Burton’s reach because of her record. Steadfast about not going back, Burton came up with a plan. She knew she could help other women like herself, and that nobody could tell her “No.” From her years in the prison system, she knew that Greyhound buses arriving from California’s prisons routinely deposited parolees in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, an area infamous for rampant drugs, crime and homelessness. In 1998 Burton started going to the bus station and inviting women she recognized to stay at her home. Eventually, she would run into rough economic times. Burton was paying for everything, her savings were rapidly dwindling, and when she lost her job, well, you can imagine what happened next.
Burton’s shelter has grown to five transitional residences in downtown Los Angeles that have served a total of 600 people. The organization operates on a $1 million budget, with 10 employees managing services for women rebuilding their lives after prison, including lodging, food, legal aid, and job training. Now Burton is advocating for former inmates on the national level with the groups All of Us or None and the Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement, both of which she helped found. In 2017, Susan became a best selling author with the release of her memoir, BECOMING MS. BURTON.
Reginald Dwayne Betts; Released 2005
Reginald Dwayne Betts was sixteen when he and an accompliance, carjacked a sleeping motorist. He was charged as an adult and consequently spent more than eight years in prison. Fourteen of those months were spent in solitary confinement. While in solitary confinement, someone slid under his cell door the 1971 anthology, The BlackPoets. The book exposed him to Nikki Giovanni, Robert Hayden, Etheridge Knight, Sonia Sanchez, and others. Soon, he was typing up poems in the prison’s law library, while also teaching himself the basics of law.
Upon his release he found a job working at Karibu Books in Bowie, Maryland. He was eventually promoted to store manager and founded a book club for African American boys. Betts became the national spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice, and advocates for juvenile-justice reform. He also visits detention centers, inner-city schools, and talks to at-risk young people. In 2012, President Barack Obama named Betts as a member of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In 2016, Betts graduated from Yale Law School and passed the Connecticut bar exam. In 2017, the Arts for Justice Fund granted the University of Arizona Poetry Center, $500,000 to commission new works of poetry on issues of mass incarceration. The three-year project was headed by Betts. In 2018, Betts worked as a consultant for the podcast series Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice, produced by WNYC. The series explored cases of children and adolescents who found themselves in the criminal justice system, the circumstances surrounding their lives, and legal cases. In 2019, his collaboration with painter Titus Kaphur produced a series of works entitled The Redaction.Redaction was exhibited at MoMa PS1. It presented more than 30 prints of public programs that examine issues of money bail, the state and federal court systems for which those arrested are unable to afford bail, and how they remain incarcerated despite having neither been tried nor convicted. The work drew from lawsuits filed by the Civil Rights Corps (CRC) on behalf of people incarcerated because of an inability to pay court fines and fees. The Redaction features poetry by Betts in combination with Kaphar’s etched portraits of incarcerated individuals. Betts utilizes the legal strategy of redaction to craft verse out of legal documents, capturing the complicated and pervasive effects of time spent incarcerated. These poems were screenprinted by Kaphar onto handmade paper using the Redaction font, a new open-source typeface created for the project. Betts is the author of three collections of poetry, Felon, Bastards of the Reagan Era, and Shahid Reads His Own Palm, as well as a memoir, A Question ofFreedom.
Shaka Senghor; Released2010
Shaka Senghor was convicted of second-degree murder at the age of 19, and released at the age of 38 in 2010. Senghor has spent the last decade making a name for himself as a change agent to those who are given a second chance on the other side of the prison wall. He has worked as the director of strategy and innovation for #cut50, an organization co-founded by Van Jones. #cut50 works on criminal justice reform policies including re-entry initiatives and reducing the restrictive nature of probation and parole. He has worked as a consulting producer for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network’s Released, a show that lets audiences witness the challenges faced by people recently released from prison. Senghor has held the post as the Executive Director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), founder by Scott Budnick, a peer support network to the formerly incarcerated. He also became a best selling author with the 2016 release of his memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison.
Minster King X; Released 2019
Minister King X first encountered the judicial system at 8 years old when he was arrested for trying to steal a 35-cent bag of chips from a vending machine. King, a manchild of the ‘70s, was raised by his father, a singer, musician and artist, who worked hard to take care of King and his four younger siblings. While there was no shortage of love in King’s household, he experienced firsthand the suffering caused by a deprivation of basic necessities. Inclined to care for and protect his father and young siblings, King learned how to navigate within a world of unmet needs. This eventually led him to a series of bank robberies “to support the poor peoples’ movement,” he states. With his stolen loot, King bought books and shoes for his siblings and helped his father and friends with rent. “A Black Robin Hood,” he called himself. As a flourishing hip hop artist known as Pyeface, aka the George Jackson of rap, King also supported his passion for the arts. Eventually King was caught with his hands in the cookie jar, and while luckily nobody was physically hurt, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison. Only months after being released from the feds, King found himself accused of a bank robbery. While he knew the perpetrators and had in fact provided them with tips on how to pull off a bank robbery, he did not directly participate in the crime. Nevertheless he was arrested, tried and convicted, and subsequently sentenced to 16 years in prison. While in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, he became an outspoken political writer and strategic agitator, which incurred constant retaliation from prison guards as well as a five-year extension added to his original sentence.
At the start of the millennium, after seeing the mid and late ‘90s as a registered rapper with Highside Records, doing time in the feds, he birthed into existence KAGE, Kings Against Genocidal Environments, now known as Kings and Queens Against Genocidal Environments, or United KAGE Brothers and Sisters International Union. As a developing jailhouse lawyer, King explains, “challenging the system became a lifestyle.” It was King’s knowledge of the law and refusal to succumb to prison officials’ attempts to degrade and silence him that led guards to plant a weapon on him in 2010 and subsequently sentence him to three consecutive years of solitary confinement in one of California’s notorious Security Housing Units (SHUs). With no staff accountability or legitimate due process, it can take the contempt of only one guard to find oneself arbitrarily condemned to solitary confinement for months or years. Prior to being transferred to the SHU, King was funneled through a “short-term” Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU), also solitary confinement. While ASU terms are generally shorter than SHU terms, in ASU people don’t have access to their property, including TVs or radios. It is often an individual’s first time experiencing torture by extreme sensory deprivation, and suicide rates are high. Knowing that he faced three years of solitary confinement, King made the decision to better himself through study and meditation so that he could more effectively challenge and ultimately change the system and contribute to the strength and wellbeing of his community, both inside and outside the prison walls. He rejected materialism and decided to “play chess versus checkers,” using strategic foresight at all times.
In SHU, King found himself surrounded by some of California’s greatest thinkers, including OGs who had survived decades of solitary confinement through self-education, empowerment, and a deep sense of soul, self, and determination. These men included Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Mutope Duguma, Heshima Denham, Michael Zaharibu Dorrough, Paul Redd, James Baridi Williamson, Louis Powell, and others. Several of these men were members of the Short Corridor Collective, which organized the massive California Prisoner Hunger Strikes of 2011 and 2013, and created the historic Agreement to End Hostilities in 2012, a document created to counter CDCR’s efforts to sow discord, violence and division. The Agreement to End Hostilities promoted the very thing King had already come to embrace, solidarity as an act of resistance.
King has always been influential behind the wall, especially when it comes to the arts. A prolific writer of raps and plays, he also excels in the performance arts, such as spokenword and theater. To get into the detail of King’s artistic influence would not do it justice in a single article. In 2018, he was a principal writer in the No Joke Theater’s production of Lost andFound. His revolutionary spirit comes through in We Must FindOur Wings. A play he wrote about a local hip-hop radio station and one of its disk jockeys, Radio DJ, and his interactions with listeners during the call-in segment of his radio show. In Playing My Strike a work so powerful, the men at California State Prison Los Angeles County, where it was performed, were still talking about this piece a year later, and it influenced prisoners at this prison to participate in the 2018 nationwide prisoner strike.
Upon his release, he immediately hit the ground running, becoming involved with the national chapter of All of Us or None in Oakland, California. In less than 30 days after his release, King was a principal organizer and participant in a fundraiser for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper called Truth Be Told: The Darkside of Gentrification, co-hosted by KAGE and All of Us or None. Founded in 1976, the SanFrancisco Bay View is known as the national Black newspaper that serves as a network for freedom fighters. Many of the prison policy issues being debated by presidential candidates were first proposed by prison writers and thinkers on the pages of the Bay View and its website. In December of 2019 was the Artivists in Action and Solidarity, a fundraising event that had emerged from a powerful alliance and special bond between two Bay Area-based newspapers, the SanFrancisco Bay View and the California Prison Focus, and King’s prison-based anti-hostility group, KAGE. The event offered a special opportunity to honor the legacy of SF Bay View publisher, editor, and unsung heroes Willie and Mary Ratcliff by presenting the first annual Ratcliff Award to another unsung hero within the community. King conceptualized this art-centered event from within the confines of his cell, with plans to implement both the event and the KAGE program. The event used art to shine a light on the hidden atrocities of prison, to gain the release of imprisoned elders, to support imprisoned artists, and to support the two publications that inspired and empowered King throughout his journey. The event raised money through a silent prisoner art auction, and the proceeds went to participating prisoner artists, the SF Bay View, and the CaliforniaPrison Focus.
Since December, King is now the Co-Director to the CaliforniaPrisonFocus. The event on Wednesday, the International Prisoner Human Rights Movement/Liberate the Caged Voices Campaign to Free the Organizers of the California Prisoner Hunger Strikes is his brainchild. King is particularly commited to bringing the realities of prison to the youth using pop-culture, or, as he puts it, “Bringing substance to hip hop.”
[Editor’s Note]: the video, SanQuentin X by Minister King X, aka Pyeface was published on Feb 7, 2020. It is the first of a political/historical series, written in Pelican Bay State Prison, from the not yet released soundtrack of the CPF K.A.G.E. musical production: From the K.A.G.E. to the Stage: Agreement to End Hostilities, correlated to the 2011 and 2013 California Prisoner Hunger Strikes, instrumental in placing limits on the otherwise unfettered use of solitary confinement torture in California prisons.
This song was gifted to CaliforniaPrison Focus (Prison Focus newspaper) and San FranciscoBay View who supported Min. King X during his years in solitary confinement. Support SF Bay View at https://sfbayview.com/donate or California Prison Focus at http://newest.prisons.org/donate
“ENDING MASS INCARCERATION: A City’s Multicultural CALL through Art, the Day after Nipsey Hussle was…” by Darealprisonart https://link.medium.com/YrLJibKRXV
Read at August 19th, 2017 sister March for the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March in San Jose, California.
We are here together to make a more humane, just, compassionate society. To do so we must first dispel the myth about America. Then confront the self deception and lies who have come to believe as truths. Move from the illusion into the heartbreaking reality that it is. We will be disorientated. “The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off,” wrote James Baldwin.[1]
We must reclaim our individual power because trying to operate within an alienating demoralizing social structure is killing us. We can no longer afford to lay low, keep quiet, or resign to our situation. We have been conditioned to accept things as they are, and be grateful. Fears get stirred periodically just enough to keep us off-balanced and scared into subjugation. We must each free ourselves from self-imposed states of helplessness and powerlessness through action. It is a daunting task. However, I know collectively we can be a force.
We are here to point out the glaring contradiction of having the 13th Amendment legalizing slavery in this Free Nation. These two entities cannot coexist. There is no room for slavery in Humanity. They can be no exception for any group. Abolitioning the exclusion of the 13th Amendment will require that we dismantle the inherit racist social order and unequal distribution of resources that are “a badge and incident of slavery.” Emancipated slaves had no resources but their labor. They entered binding contracts that were coercive and placed them in positions similar to slavery. If they breached the contract there was the criminal law to punish them into legal enslavement via the 13th Amendment. Domination merely appeared in new disguises.
Our Humanity has been held hostage by the false belief of race superiority. There is no such thing. Nonetheless it is this delusion and economic greed which bore the dehumanizing practice of slavery.
Slavery is a reflection of an entire system of understandings, practices, laws, and institutions that confers power and social status to a selected few determined on controlling others. Since the 13th Amendment’s ratification in 1865, those the dominant culture has deemed less than have been the targeted of this convenient injustice. Slavs, Blacks, Chinese, Jews, Irish-Americans, indigenous Indians, Mexicans, Japanese Americans, and more recently our poor, our mentally ill, our newly released prisoners, and our homeless have been further marginalized. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me,” Ralph Ellison wrote In The Invisible Man.[2]
This has been our challenge as a nation. How to fight personal prejudices, systematic bias and racial discrimination that perpetrates negative stereotypes and other lies we have at an unconscious level come to believe as fact. The disenfranchised have learned to have low expectations of themselves, to blame themselves for their low station in life, to accept undignified conditions. Non-dominant groups have been forced to assimilate and accultrate, be absorbed into a culture that has never fully accepted them as equals. And in this conformity they have lost their identity, shed traditional clothing, silenced their native tongue, not eating their foods. Becoming a shell of who they were and prepared to be colonized psychologically. To negate is to gain they are promised. This is not Freedom! We must change this.
George Orwell wrote “Freedom is slavery.”[3] Freedom is a constant struggle that requires constant vigilance and more importantly a stance of no tolerance when attacked. Freedom comes with civic duty and social responsibilities. We will need to create programs that nurture self-determination and social and civic equality.
Our other challenge has and will be as James Baldwin wrote: “It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach our children to hate.”[4] It is our responsibility to bring about the humanity in all of us as equals. As we go through this transformation we must remain conscious that “the other is oneself” as Baldwin stated.
Rferences: 1.) James Baldwin. “A Letter to My Nephew.” The Progressive Magazine, 01 Jan. 1963. 2) Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man (1952). 3) George Orwell. 1984 (1949). 4) James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time (1962). 5) James Baldwin.
A poet, playwright, painter, musician, and America’s most prolific prisoner artist, ask Google search, “Who is the world’s most prolific prisoner-artist?”, and Donald “C-Note” Hooker is ranked #1. In the sweltering sands of the Mojave Desert lies Los Angeles’s only prison, and behind those walls lies an artist they call the American Ai Weiwei. This title, given when Google Search was asked, Who is America’s most prolific prisoner-artist?”, and C-Note was ranked #2 behind China’s Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist, prisoner, activist, and dissident. For a foreign national to be number one on a question about American prisoners was disconcerting. So if the number one ranking is from China, who would be his American counterpart? That would be the first American name on the list. “They started calling me that cause these guys sure took pride in knowing someone who was being listed in the same category as Ai Weiwei,” says C-Note. While C-Note awaits for his works to sell in the six-figures and seven figures that Ai Weiwei’s works sell for, he has mimicked Ai Weiwei in another way. In 2014, Ai Weiwei had an exhibition inside the federal prison on Alcatraz. In 2017, having already passed Ai Weiwei as America’s most prolific prisoner-artist, C-Note was a part of a major American prisoner art exhibition, also on Alcatraz, Art Escape at Alcatraz, May-June 2017.
If the 2.3 million American prison population were a city, it would be the fourth largest behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, all known for very vibrant art scenes. Behind the prison wall there is a vibrant art culture, and Hip Hop plays a vital role. “Prison culture and Street culture have always played a vital role in Hip Hop,” says C-Note.
“One of Hip Hop’s founding art forms, graffiti, was started in prison. I call my work Hip Hop because in the early days of rap, rappers were called news reporters. The American mainstream press did not cover the plight of the inner city, so our stories reached the public through rap. Photojournalism can show you what it looks like to be locked up, but only the artist can tell you what it feels like to be locked up, and it’s hell. What mainstream media outlet is reporting these stories? With so many people in our communities locked up, predominantly for quality of life crimes, a real Hip Hop consciousness is right here in prison. So the next time you hear about the death nails of Hip Hop, tell’em nah, ‘Hip Hop ain’t dead; it went to prison. ‘”
Oh Miss Bree how I adore you.. Your passion has touched me so deeply.. I am in awe of your beauty✊✊ your courage speaks volumes.. Your message was loud & clear…. Sweet blessings to you my sister.. The beacon of light in this time of chaos.. I support all that you stand for.. ✊ #BlackLivesMatter Not to leave out the courage of the young man who assisted her.. Mr. Tyson you both are appreciated..🙌🙌💃
Ok I guess my questions goes out to men women all of you ” Why is it that you think life is all about a game? ALways think someone is out to get you or hurt you. Life is not all about you being two steps ahead of the game. I use to be like that but because of that mentality I hurt alot of people men when I use to get down and women at the present. Let me tell you something some one who is on top of everything and in touch with their grown side don’t need a backup plan or a side line.You know who you are and what you have to offer and if the next person aint with it then they are just not good enough for you but your smart enough to know that.When you take for granted things and people in your life you miss out on whats right in front of you.Might be that soul mate or that perfect one you will never know because you always think some one is trying to play a game so you play it first. I mean think about it do all your relationships fail well if so take a look in the mirror and do some self checks instead of checking someone elese and you will find the real problem is you.When you can be honest with yourself then and only then can you be be open and honest with someone else.
This is the kind of thing that ‘Distractions’ cause one to ‘Forget’ ~ What happened to Black Wall Street on JUNE 1, 1921?
The name fittingly given to one of the most affluent All-BLACK Communities in America, was bombed from the air and Burned to the ground by mobs of envious Whites.
In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving Black Business District in northern Tulsa lay smoldering — a model Community destroyed and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
The Night’s Carnage left some 3,000 African Americans Dead and over 600 Successful Businesses Lost.
Among these were 21 Churches, 21 Restaurants, 30 Grocery Stores and 2 Movie Theaters, plus A Hospital, A Bank, a Post Office, Libraries, Schools, Law Offices, a half dozen Private Airplanes and even A Bus System.
As could have been expected, the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with
Ranking City Officials and many other Sympathizers.
The best description of BLACK WALL STREET, or Little Africa as it was also known, would be to compare it to a mini — Berverly Hills.
It was the golden door of the BLACK Community during the early 1900’s, and it proved that African Americans
could create a successful infrastructure.
That’s What BLACK WALLSTREET, Was All About.
The Dollar circulated 36 to 100 Times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the Community.
Now a Dollar leaves the BLACK Community in 15-minutes.
As Far As Resources, there were Ph.D.’s residing in Little Africa, BLACK Attorneys and Doctors.
One Doctor was Dr. Berry who owned the Bus System. His average income was $500 a Day, a hefty pocket change in 1910.
It was a time when the entire State of Oklahoma had only 2 Airports, yet 6 BLACKS, Owned their own Planes.
It was a very Fascinating Community.
The mainstay of the Community was to educate every child.
Nepotism was the one word they Believed in. And that’s what we need to get back to.
The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it was intersected by Archer and Pine Streets.
From the First Letters in each of those Three Names you get G.A.P. And that’s where the renowned R&B Music
Group The GAP Band got its name. They’re From Tulsa.
BLACK WALLSTREET was a prime example of the typical, BLACK Community in America that did businesses, but it was in an unusual location.
You See, At The Time, Oklahoma was set aside to be a BLACK and Indian State.
There were over 28 BLACK Townships there. One third of the People who traveled in the terrifying “Trail of Tears” along side the Indians between 1830 and 1842 were BLACK People.
The Citizens of this proposed Indian and BLACK State chose A BLACK Governor, A Treasurer from Kansas named McDade.
But the Ku Klux Klan said that if he assumed Office they’d Kill Him within 48 hours. A lot of BLACKS owned Farmland, and many of them had gone into the Oil Business. The Community was so tight and Wealthy because they traded Dollars hand-to-hand, and because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow Laws.
It was not unusual that if a Resident’s Home accidentally Burned down, it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by Neighbors.
This was the type of scenario that was going on Day-to-Day on BLACK WALL STREET.
When BLACK’s intermarried into the Indian Culture, some of them received their promised ’40 Acres and A Mule’
and with that came whatever Oil was later found on the Properties.
It is a sad thought to know that the more we become “awake” and conscious of who we are, the more we feel less capable to sustain the current lifestyles we live. We have out grown our society, to such an extent that to live in it, is to be isolated from it. Because we no longer have a need of it. We the “awake” the “conscious”, people do not delight in the state of things as they are. We want more out of this existence, we want to feel more, live more, smile more, laugh more. We’d rather be Alive than dead. The 9-5 job is not enough. The divisions created by race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, disability, etc are such a bore, we are done being entertained by ignorance. How is it that, being aware of who one is should make one feel alone in this world, as if it is a curse to know oneself. This should not be, if this is how it is, we should create a new world or rather a better existence for those of us who have escaped. Now all is possible, in this life. All can be done, as all can be made real by thought alone. The reality of our thoughts imagined within the world will be just as real.
We can set the system against itself, like how countries put their people against themselves by way of “civil war.” Yet our war will be with thought, and our power will be in numbers, our tool will be money, and our advantage with money will be the uselessness of it till it meets our end.
We will gain favor by our purpose; our established meaning, our uniformity and our will to make others and ourselves happy. We will fashion for ourselves new identities; since our identity will be devoid of any worldly purpose, our pursuits will reach the heavens!
Therefore let us come together, you and I, let us create great things. I have thoughts, you have thoughts, let us share them. All this education we possess, and for what, but to be made low by a system that no longer deserves our participation! For the devil and Christ have come down for us, to exert power over us, and the rule of money and thought and government and law and religion too have attempted to exert power over us, but no longer should it. Let us do away with it all. We are not lawless, we need not fear death. We will save ourselves from ourselves. At last let us seek power for ourselves, power in our humanity, power in our sheer “nothingness”. Together we will make LOVE our new commandment.
Courtesy of Chocolate Socrates..
Now each one teach one👌💃
Street Thotz 