Link

Another of my National Poetry Month #BH365 posts from my other blog…

Black History 365, National Poetry Month edition: Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Link

Not sure if I reposted this already… I’m  about to reblog all the National Poetry Month #BH365 posts from my other blog…

Black History 365, National Poetry Month edition: Ai Ogawa (Florence Anthony).

Black History Month 2014: The prequel

Black History Month 2014: The prequel.

The origins of Black History Month cross posted from my other blog

Black History Month 2014 – The first Black person to… be a published author

Black History Month 2014 – The first Black person to… be a published author.

Another link from my other blog… Still on the Black History Month theme. I need to write some more poet/poetry related posts for this blog but I’ll have to get back to that… maybe tomorrow?

Black History Month 2014 – The first Black people to… Have a settlement as free persons before emancipation

Black History Month 2014 – The first Black people to… Have a settlement as free persons before emancipation.

The link is to my other blog… I’ve been slacking on my #BH365 posts… so this will be a way to catch up. Please read it and let me know what you think.

#BH365 = Black History 365 — Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin

I’ve been watching a lot of historical documentaries lately and it inspired me to add yet another theme to my weeks here on WordPress: Black History 365. Basically it is part of the idea that there should not just be one day/week/month out of the year that people acknowledge the contributions of people of color to American history. The items that I will post are just the history of our country that focus on people who happen to be Black. I hope you learn as much from reading these as I do looking up the information to post it.

When most people think of African American History, they usually think of several main points… 1) slavery, and 2) the civil rights movement of the 1960s. I will definitely mention people who have done things within these two categories but I will try not to have those items be my ONLY focus for this section of my blog.

Since my last post was about the 1968 Olympics, I couldn’t help but think about the year that Jesse Owens proved the Aryans wrong on their own turf in Berlin at the 1936 Olympics

On Aug. 3, 1936, Jesse Owens launched his way into sports stardom at the Summer Olympics in Berlin, where he racked up his first of four gold medals in the 100 meter sprint. As legend goes, German leader Adolf Hitler snubbed the African-American athlete for humiliating Germany and the Aryan athletes whom he had defeated on the track. However, some have claimed to debunk this supposed myth.

 

 

#BH365 = Black History 365 — Protest at the 1968 Olymics

I’ve been watching a lot of historical documentaries lately and it inspired me to add yet another theme to my weeks here on WordPress: Black History 365. Basically it is part of the idea that there should not just be one day/week/month out of the year that people acknowledge the contributions of people of color to American history. The items that I will post are just the history of our country that focus on people who happen to be Black. I hope you learn as much from reading these as I do looking up the information to post it.

When most people think of African American History, they usually think of several main points… 1) slavery, and 2) the civil rights movement of the 1960s. I will definitely mention people who have done things within these two categories but I will try not to have those items be my ONLY focus for this section of my blog.

The documentaries I have been watching happened to be based on the American civil rights movement of the 1960s so I will start there. The first documentary I watched was about the silent protest at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City of two Black medal winners and the white Australian medal winner who shared the podium with them.

 

Gold Medallist Tommie Smith, (center) and Bronze medallist John Carlos (right) showing the raised fist on the podium after the 200m in the 1968 Summer Olympics wearing Olympic Project for Human Rights badges. The third athlete is silver medalist Peter Norman from Australia wearing an OPHR badge to show his support for the two Americans.
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The two American athletes were sent home for their act of protest which considering the prevalent culture of the day was to be expected. Surprisingly, even though the Aussie athlete was a world record holder (with a record that took 38 years to top), when he got back to Australia, he was basically unofficially banned from track and field for wearing a pin in solidarity with his American fellow athletes.

 

 

Finding the Erasure of My Silence

“By speaking my story I am adding to the erasure of that silence”
~ Jasmine Schlafke on the systematic silencing of marginalized groups

I am a woman, and Black, and diagnosed with clinical depression… and yet… I don’t feel like I have a story. I was a childhood witness to addiction and physical abuse and yet I don’t feel like that witness is enough. I survived date rape but feel like it is not something anyone would want to hear about.

I wonder sometimes how to get past all these blocks in my speech. I don’t know most days how to tell my story or if I try, it comes out so distant from myself that I feel like it is ineffective. I flip flop between wanting to just get it out and into the air, and wanting it to actually be a meaningful help to someone who has also been silent.

Perhaps the inability to tell my past is why I focus on writing my now and my future. Why I create adventure after adventure. I am fire barely controlled. I am a circus act of moderate proportions. I dance to release and sometimes control my feelings. I am a poet and painter and picture taker. I have become a Jill of all trades and a master of none. I become a slave to my own sense of being interesting to the world.

As I write this I am realizing how much I have to tell. I am nearly native to Arizona which is a state nationally notorious for it’s super right winged closed mindedness. How did I grow to be a hetero-flexible person in spite of my self chosen Christianity in a place where the conservative hierarchy makes the rules?

Maybe there is too much to tell. Will I even be able to think about all the things I could tell from before as I am preparing for the future? Once I am on my amazing journey, will I have space in my brain for organizing my many tales into something worth sharing? I honestly don’t know. I just know I have to acknowledge that I actually DO have something to say.

All I really know at this point is that I have to remember who I am at my core. I have to thank every immortal cell in my body and thank all the energy in the universe for all that I  had, all I have, and all I will have. For now, that is what I do to survive this magical carpet ride of life.