I’ll be portraying Fields
A
modern man brings his slave ancestor to life, revealing America's complex story
Janell Ross, August 30, 2019, NBC News
FORT MONROE, Va. — Joseph Rogers started with his tie, unwinding the broad Balthus knot he’d wound that morning.
Then, he slipped out of his shined leather shoes, his slim-fit gray vest
and the matching trousers he’d worn for the trip to Fort Monroe, on the
Virginia coast, for a commemoration marking 400 years since the arrival
of the first Africans enslaved in what would
become America.
As Rogers stepped into a pair of mahogany cotton trousers, borrowed from
the American Civil War Museum’s replica clothing collection, this
21st-century black man — with a cloud-based calendar full of obligations
and a habit of walking double-time, chest out,
shoulders back — began to recede. Rogers was approaching character now,
ready to embody a 19th-century slave.
“I am James Apostle Fields,” Rogers said slowly, almost haltingly, to a
woman who inquired about his outfit just outside the men’s room where
he’d changed. Then Rogers shifted back to his own voice. “I’ll be
portraying Fields,” he told the woman, “my ancestor,
an enslaved man who during Reconstruction was elected to the Virginia
Legislature.”
continue
think
absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption
Popular posts from this blog
Elles Houwelingon, January 21, 2019, New Historian
Everyone has heard shocking stories about the transatlantic slave trade,
but this was hardly the only type of slavery in which Europeans were
engaged. The Pacific slave trade involved the forceful enslavement of
Pacific islanders from the mid 19thcentury to
the 20thcentury. This particular type of slavery is often referred to
as “blackbirding”.
The primary focus of “blackbirding” was to supply cheap labor to
sugar-cane plantations on Pacific plantations, particularly in
Queensland, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoan Islands. This was mainly
achieved through trickery and kidnapping. They were frequently
deceived about the length of time for which they were “contracted” and
the nature of their “contract”. If all this failed, the islanders were
simply loaded onto slave ships at gunpoint.
The captured islanders were collectively known as Kanakas, which means
Person or Man in Hawaiian. These workers were essentially treated a…
The truth about Jackson’s savagery was just as disturbing as the fake news. After a particularly bloody battle in 1814, Andrew Jackson’s men counted the dead Indians by cutting off their noses. They collected 557 noses.
and... (this comment)
Jackson ran an ad in the Nashville Gazette, in October, 1804, for the capture of a runaway slave, which stated that in addition to the reward, he would pay an extra $10 per 100 lashes (up to 300), to anyone who willing to inflict them upon his miscreant property. He was known to hold a vengeful lifetime grudge against anyone whom he felt had slighted him, regardless of how minor the supposed offense. His betrayal the Choctow tribe, whom he persuaded to become American allies over the British during the war of 1812, culminated in the “Indian Removal Act” (Trail of Tears), of which he took personal responsiblity to see implemented, resulted in the death of thousands of men, women and children. It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the White…
Comments