Black Love: Benjamin Banneker And Anola

Benjamin Banneker“At age twenty-eight, [Benjamin Banneker] the young clockmaker fell in love with Anola, a beautiful slave on a nearby plantation. He could marry her legally only if she were free, but her master refused to sell her to Banneker, saying, ‘I will never sell her to a Negro!’ Banneker devised an elaborate plan to steal her. He booked passage for them both on a ship to England, but his plan failed and almost cost him his life. A short time later, Anola, brokenhearted, drowned herself. Banneker vowed to keep her memory alive, and he never married.” -From, “African American Inventors” By: Otha Richard Sullivan

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Plantation Food: Brazil vs. America

Brazilian FeijoadaIn her autobiography, Beverly Johnson discusses the cuisine she was introduced to when she was on a photo shoot in Brazil: “I always enjoyed tasting the local cuisine of every country I visited during my career…Brazil’s national dish is feijoada, a tasty stew that differs throughout the country, but where I was it comprised beans, fresh pork or beef, cabbage, kale, potatoes, okra, carrots, and pumpkin in one large yummy meal. Feijoada had been served to Brazilian slaves, because it contained the unwanted part of the pig (such as the feet, nose, ears) and cheap black beans. This made me think of African-American slaves who were fed with the leftovers of whatever was served in the main house on the plantation.”

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Black History Fact Of The Day

Red, Black & Green Elsie Law Logo“For portions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, New York City housed the largest urban slave population in mainland North America, with more slaves than any other city on the continent. During those years, slaves composed more than one quarter of the labor force in the city and perhaps as much as one half of the workers in many of its outlying districts.” -From, “Slavery In New York”

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African Slaves Built The Rice Industry

Rice Plantation“South Carolina’s slave-plantation owners had known nothing about how to grow and irrigate rice. That knowledge was brought to the low country by Africans stolen from the Sierra Leone by the Royal African company of England. As the slaves produced the rice that made the plantation owners rich, their glistening backs bore the branded acronymn of their corporate captors: R.A.C.E.” From, “The Reckoning” By: Randall Robinson

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African Slavery & The West Indies

West Indies Slavery“The West Indies was one of the last places on earth where enslaved Africans wanted to find themselves. Its system of bondage was especially brutal, and American planters found it a convenient dumping ground for troublesome slaves. Shipping a slave to the West Indies was like sentencing him to death. George Washington as one of the slave owners who did this, as he recounted in a letter describing the arrangements he made to rid himself of a slave who kept running away.” -From, “Standing In The Shadows” By: John Head

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