The Gantt Report
The year 1815 was a very important year to me and for the Black and African people that lived that year in North America.
I couldn’t call those Black residents of this country African Americans because Blacks at that time, just like at this time, don’t always have the rights of Americans, the privileges of Americans or the opportunities of Americans.
In 1815, a couple of things happened. Richard Allen officially created the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first wholly African American church denomination in the United States and Abolitionist Levi Coffin establishes the Underground Railroad in Indiana. Eventually it spread across the North with routes originating in the South and stretching to British Canada.
But that is not why I say 2015 should be like 1815.
2015 should be like 1815 because in 1815 Blacks in this country didn’t posture like they do these days, they didn’t perpetrate and they didn’t punk out!
In 1815, masses of Blacks across the country planned. After becoming fed up with the hitting, the beatings, the whippings, the shootings, the hangings, the lynchings and the killings of Black men, women and children, Black people planned to do things to stop it! They planned to organize. They planned to unite. They planned to fight back like they should be planning this very day!
What was the result of all of that 1815 planning? Well, the white history books won’t fully tell you, the white media won’t inform you and God knows the modern day handkerchief-heads, buck dancers, fiddlers, boot lickers, Uncle Toms, Sambos and Aunt Jemimas won’t even try to tell you.
So, let The Gantt Report break down what went down 200 years ago after Black people used their minds, followed their hearts and decided enough was enough.
In 1817 Escaped slaves from Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama joined the Seminole Indians in a Florida military campaign to fight the devilish beasts of that day to keep their homelands.
In 1822 Denmark Vesey and about 5000 slaves planned a revolt in South Carolina that was designed to kill every slave master in that state along with the slave master’s wives and children.
In 1827 Freedom’s Journal begins publication on March 16 in New York City as the first African American owned newspaper in the United States. The editors were John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish.
In 1829 David Walker of Boston publishes “An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” which calls for a slave uprising in the South.
In 1831 Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia, killing at least 57 whites.
In 1832 “The Female Anti-Slavery Society”, the first African American women’s abolitionist society, is founded in Salem, Massachusetts.
I could go on and on about other plans and actions in the 1800s by Blacks like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, William Wells Brown, Dred Scott and others that are easy to find out about if we put down our smart phones and pick up a book sometimes!
I just want to say the idea that to progress all Black and African people have to do is pray and beg and pray and beg again is a ridiculous idea that should done away with.
Marching, sitting in and all of that kind of stuff will never make the powers that be do the right thing.
We must come together and put plans together to improve our lives and standards of living.
We must unite all of the different religions, factions, groups, organizations, fraternities, sororities, masons, gangs, clicks and all other people concerned about our future and our children’s futures.
2015 should be like 1815. We should plan, we should strategize and we should demand our human rights and secure those rights by any and every legal and honorable means necessary!
