That is a hot lie.

In 1860, the nearly four million enslaved people in the United States represented over $3 billion in capital. That was more wealth than all of the railroads and all the factories combined.

If you were one of those four million people, it was extremely likely you landed directly in Charleston. Those cobblestone streets were the headquarters for the enslaved supply chain in the United States.

So I visited Charleston to walk the city with Black history literally baked into the streets.

The Financial District

Tourists flock to the City Market to buy souvenirs. This led to one of the biggest myths is that they once sold slaves there.

They did not sell enslaved people at the City Market.

The city had ordinances making it illegal to auction human beings inside the public market.

But this wasn’t out of morality; it was about optics.

The Charleston elite viewed the enslaved as livestock. They didn’t want the dirt, disease, and noise of a human auction mixing with the city’s food supply.

However, enslaved people were absolutely at the City Market, but they were there as buyers and sellers.

Enslaved cooks and farmers were sent there daily by their owners to buy the meat and vegetables for the plantations, or to sell leftover produce and sometimes their own goods.

The real human trafficking happened at the end of the street at the Custom House.

Before 1856, they sold human beings right on the cobblestones, auctioning them off openly on the streets. eventually the screaming and the sight of families being rip apart offended the delicate sensibilities of Charleston’s elite.

So they moved it just a few blocks away to Chalmers Street.

They didn’t shut the system down; they just moved the horrors indoors and out of sight. The Old Slave Mart operated exactly like a Car Dealership for the enslaved.

It was a four-building compound equipped with a jail, kitchen, showroom, and a auction block.

They prepared human beings like inventory at a grocery store.

Brokers fed the captives heavy diets to inflate their weight. They greased their skin with pork fat to make them look healthy and dyed the hair of older men black all to raise their appraised value.

Buyers walked the showroom floor inspecting teeth and muscles. They checked backs for whip marks a heavily scarred back meant the person was “incorrigible,” which lowered their market price.

People were bought and sold based on their job, age, and gender. A skilled blacksmith could be bought for around $1,500.

In 1850s math, that was the equivalent of buying a BMW in straight cash.

This was the Wall Street of the South.

The Rent Trap

From the auction block, a captive could easily be sent to an agricultural prison like the McLeod Plantation.

In 1851, William McLeod bought a 1,700-acre tract on James Island for $9,000.

History remembers the enslaved as unskilled laborers.

In reality, McLeod bought 74 captive Black laborers for their highly specialized knowledge in the cultivation of Sea Island cotton, the best cotton in the entire world.

To flex his wealth, McLeod built a row of wooden slave cabins right along his oak-lined driveway.

It was a billboard of his enslaved workforce.

Unlike the isolated Lowcountry rice plantations at McLeod, there was no escaping the white gaze. The cultivation required relentless surveillance and the brutal enforcement of daily 100-pound quotas.

Sea Island cotton is not regular cotton.

It grows 6 or 7 feet tall and blooms continuously from September through January. It requires constant maintenance and has to be harvested every 10 days, or you start losing money.

These enslaved people survived the daily violence and threats to keep this highly lucrative supply chain moving.

When the Civil War ended, the US government promised the dirt to the freedmen.

However, President Andrew Johnson later pardoned the planters, sent the military to evict the Black families, and handed the property right back to the McLeods.

Left with zero land, the Freedmen were economically trapped as they transitioned from enslaved laborers to tenant farmers, and later sharecroppers.

The McLeod family rented those exact same uninsulated wooden boxes former enslaved cabins right back to them for $27 a month.

And the descendants of those enslaved families lived there until 1990.

Not 1890.

1990.

The Fort

When you generate 3 billion dollars in human capital, you have to build walls to protect it.

That is why the history doesn’t end on the land, so I took the ferry out to Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter is billed as the ultimate white Confederate shrine. But it has Black hands literally baked into its walls.

Starting in 1829, the US government rented enslaved Black men from Charleston planters to build a military installation from nothing.

They laid seven million bricks by hand to construct walls 50 feet high.

If you look closely, you can still see the fingerprints of the Black men and children who built the bricks baked directly into the walls.

In 1863, when the Union military returned to unleashed a massive bombardment to reduce the fort to rubble, the Confederate soldiers retreated into bomb-proof bunkers.

They sent the enslaved Black men out into the active fire.

Black men and boys were forced to act as human sandbags, moving bricks and timber under heavy artillery to keep the fort held together.

The first shots of the Civil War was not a political dispute over states’ rights.

It was a violent military strike executed by the Southern elite to protect their 3 billion dollar enslaved capital investment.

Why This Still Matters

Today, it may feel like Charleston is a facade built to hide its dark history.

A reinvention to shed its story of enslaved capital for rainbow-colored houses and cobblestone streets.

A shrine to Confederate white nonsense.

But as I walked these streets with my wife and son in tow, I saw the charm in Charleston, but not for the reasons you might think.

It’s not the pineapple fountain or the Confederate museums. It’s that there is literally Black history everywhere. From the City Market to the rice fields, it’s even in the bricks.

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

— Ida B. Wells

Community Spotlight:

I want to take a moment to shout out the community

A special thank you to Rising Moon., and Joy C., two of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Listen: How Black Cooks Humiliated Enslavers With Oxtail

You walk into a restaurant today and see a plate of oxtails for $35 or $40. A century ago, that exact same cut of meat was considered garbage. The white folks tossed it to the side, assuming the tough, bony tail was completely worthless.

This is the history of how Black cooks across the diaspora, from the American South to Jamaica took the scraps nobody wanted and built an undeniable delicacy.

If you would like to support my work with a one-time donation via my Buy Me a Coffee.

Donations

The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is “Black Against Empire” by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr.

The Black Panthers were a highly organized political force that put their lives on the line for revolution.

This book details how they built organization from the ground up, their fight against the government, and the secret war the government waged to destroy them.

Grab the book and join the discussion.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

Sources:

• McLeod Plantation Historic Site

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• The wonderful employees at these Historic Sites

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

The white establishment feared the rhythm was a secret language, the sound of rebellion.

So, the enslaved created a workaround.

They took dried gourds, animal skins, and horsehair strings to recreate the akonting and the banza, based on West African lutes

Enslavers didn’t recognize this as a threat.

For 200 years, the “twang“ of country music was exclusively a Black sound, resonating through the cabins and cotton fields.

But in the 1920s, the white recording industry saw the money in the Black music and staged a robbery.

THE HEIST

At the turn of the 20th century, country music was a shared landscape.

Black and white musicians played the exact same songs using the exact same instruments.

Then record executives realized they could make even more money by manufacturing a racial divide.

They made the decision in the 1920s to segregate their catalogs.

They took that shared music and literally split it in two.

If a white musician recorded a song, the executives marketed it as “Hillbilly” music. If a Black musician recorded that exact same song, they branded it as a “Race” record.

They scrubbed Black musicians from promotional photos, stripped them of their publishing rights, and created the multi-million-dollar lily -white country music industry.

They didn’t just steal the songs; they drew a white line that rebranded a Black sound as a Appalachian tradition.

HUMAN TAPE RECORDER

The Carter Family is universally recognized as the “First Family of Country.” But they didn’t do it alone.

While A.P. Carter was a collector of songs, he couldn’t actually read or write music.

In the 1920s, there were no portable recorders.

If you heard a melody, you wouldn’t have any way to “save” the sound; it was gone the moment the musician stopped playing.

To solve this, A.P. employed a Black guitar player named Lesley Riddle.

Riddle was missing a leg and two fingers on his picking hand from a shotgun accident, but he possessed an exceptional musical ear.

He acted as A.P. Carter’s human recorder.

They traveled through the segregated South together; Carter would write down the lyrics to old songs, while Riddle memorized the melodies.

More importantly, Riddle taught Maybelle Carter his highly specific fingerpicking technique.

That technique became known as the “Carter Scratch.”

It is considered a foundational guitar style of early country music. Maybelle Carter later admitted publicly that she learned her revolutionary style directly from Riddle.

The “First Family of Country” built their empire on a Black man with three fingers.

THE GHOST

Hank Williams is the architect of modern country songwriting.

But before he was a star, he was a kid in Alabama paying a Black street musician named Rufus “Tee Tot” Payne in food and spare change for lessons.

Payne didn’t just teach Williams how to play. He taught him how to blend the blues with that hillbilly sound, and how to command an audience.

Williams acknowledged that Payne was his only musical instructor and gave him all the training he ever needed.

The financial outcomes couldn’t have been more different.

Payne died in poverty at a Montgomery, Alabama charity hospital in 1939, he was later buried in an unmarked grave.

Meanwhile, Williams went on to generate untold millions using the exact vocal and instrumental styling Payne taught him.

THE MASCOT

The Grand Ole Opry is an institution in country music.

It was launched in 1927 on the back of DeFord Bailey, a Black man known as the “Harmonica Wizard”

He was the Opry’s first performer and one of its biggest early stars, single-handedly driving the massive ratings that built an institution.

But while he was making the station wealthy, management treated him like property.

Bailey faced humiliating segregation while touring to promote the white-owned Opry; he couldn’t eat in the same restaurants or sleep in the same hotels as his white colleagues.

The Opry’s founder even publicly referred to him as their “mascot.”

“Like some members of his race and others, DeFord was lazy. He knew about a dozen numbers, which he put on the air and recorded for a major company, but he refused to learn any more, even though the reward was great. He was our mascot and is still loved by the entire company.”

-George Hay

In 1941, they fired him. The official story was a “licensing dispute.”

In reality, CBS Radio (which began broadcasting the Opry that year) had a strict policy against Black performers.

They used a legal loophole to purge the Opry’s biggest star.

The man who helped build the most powerful institution in country music spent the rest of his life shining shoes.

WHY THIS STILL MATTERS

We are constantly told that Black people don’t belong in country music.

That we are just observers of a genre we have no claim to.

Black folks didn’t just “influence” country music; we created it. It was built on our backs.

The industry didn’t start white; it was a deliberate corporate strategy to rebrand Black music and walk away with the profits.

Even when Black artists like Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Linda Martell broke down barriers, the white establishment aggressively guarded the doors.

Today, Black artists receive less than 1.5% of total airplay on country radio.

Yet, the next time someone tells you country music is a white tradition, remind them that this industry like everything else in this nation, was engineered by Black genius.

“The white man did not give us anything. We built the house. We paved the roads. We picked the cotton. We provided the foundation of this country’s wealth, only to be locked out of the front door of the house we built.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Community Spotlight:

I want to take a moment to shout out the community

A special thank you to Lisa T., and Amelia B., two of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Listen: How Black Cooks Humiliated Enslavers With Oxtail

You walk into a restaurant today and see a plate of oxtails for $35 or $40. A century ago, that exact same cut of meat was considered garbage. The white folks tossed it to the side, assuming the tough, bony tail was completely worthless.

This is the history of how Black cooks across the diaspora, from the American South to Jamaica took the scraps nobody wanted and built an undeniable delicacy.

If you would like to support my work with a one-time donation via my Buy Me a Coffee.

Donations

The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is “Black Against Empire” by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr.

The Black Panthers were a highly organized political force that put their lives on the line for revolution.

This book details how they built organization from the ground up, their fight against the government, and the secret war the government waged to destroy them.

Grab the book and join the discussion.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

Sources:

• Karl Hagstrom Miller, “Segregating Sound”

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

If you want to join us for the next one, make sure you subscribe to the newsletter.

Subscribe now

A few days ago, we dug into Avengers of the New World by Laurent DuBois. At its core, is a manual on Black liberation.

In 1789, the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) generated more wealth than all the other 13 North American colonies combined. It produced 60 percent of the world’s coffee and 40 percent of its sugar, but that wealth required Black bodies. Fifty percent of the enslaved Africans imported to the island were worked to death or died of disease within their very first year.

The history books love to frame the Haitian Revolution as an unorganized, chaotic mob of angry slaves.

That is a lie.

They were angry, but they were highly organized.

This allowed them to dismantle a global superpower from the inside out.

As detailed in Dubois’ book, half a million enslaved people out-strategized three global empires and forced the world to pivot to extortion just to ensure their revolution didn’t spread.

This is how they burned an empire to the ground.

GRAVEYARD EMPIRE

Before we talk about how the French empire was defeated, we have to talk about what existed before it.

Long before the French arrived, the Spanish turned the island into a slaughterhouse.

When Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, there were hundreds of thousands of indigenous Taino people living there.

The Spanish didn’t see the Taino as people; they saw a free labor force for their mines.

Through a combination of brutal work, executions, and European diseases, the Spanish worked the Taino population to near extinction in just a few decades.

When the gold dried up and the Taino were gone, the Spanish essentially abandoned the western third of the island.

Seeing an empty coastline, French pirates and buccaneers quietly moved in. They set up camps, hunted wild cattle, and eventually started planting tobacco and indigo.

By 1697, the French government officially took over the territory, renaming it Saint-Domingue.

The French quickly realized sugar and coffee were more profitable than gold.

But to grow it, they needed bodies. Since the indigenous population had already been wiped out, the French began importing Africans at an industrial scale.

THE POWDER KEG

To understand why the revolution succeeded, you have to look at the fragile caste system the French created.

It was a time bomb built on French math.

By 1789, the island held roughly 500,000 enslaved Africans. Holding the whip were only 30,000 white colonists. Caught in the middle were about 30,000 free people of color.

The ruling class was deeply fractured.

At the top were the ultra-rich white plantation owners who controlled the wealth. Beneath them were the poor white overseers and laborers. The poor whites fiercely resented the rich whites for their money, but their real hatred was aimed at the free people of color.

Many of the free people of color were mixed-race descendants of white planters.

They were highly educated, extremely wealthy, and many of them owned large plantations and enslaved people themselves.

The poor white colonists despised them for it. To keep the free people of color in their place, the French passed humiliating segregation laws, dictating what clothes they could wear and what professions they could hold.

The ruling class of Saint-Domingue was completely distracted.

The rich whites hated the poor whites. The poor whites hated the free people of color. The free people of color hated the racist laws.

And the enslaved hated everyone.

When the French Revolution erupted back in Europe, these three groups went to war with each other over political rights on the island. They were all so busy fighting each other for social status that they ripped their own military security apparatus apart.

In doing so, they completely ignored the 500,000 enslaved Africans who were watching a crack form in the system, waiting for their moment to drive a wedge right through it.

THE ENCRYPTED NETWORK

On August 21, 1791, the enslaved launched a massive coordinated attack across the Northern Plain. Within days, they burned 1,000 plantations to the ground and killed hundreds of white colonists.

This was not a spontaneous riot; it was a military strike.

Because the enslaved population was composed of dozens of different African ethnicities with different languages, leaders like Dutty Boukman used the Vodou religion as a secure communication network to synchronize their attack schedules.

They specifically targeted the sugar mills and the cane fields.

They understood that if they destroyed the infrastructure, they would destroy the colony’s reason to exist.

THE LEVERAGE

By 1793, the French were losing control.

White planters in Saint-Domingue committed treason by inviting the British military to invade the island just to protect the institution of slavery.

Then Spain also attacked from the east, seeing an easy win.

French Commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax was trapped. Surrounded by royalist traitors, British invaders, and Spanish troops, his only survival option was to arm the enslaved Black population.

He issued a decree abolishing slavery in the North Province to recruit Black soldiers to save his own life.

Emancipation was not a gift from French liberals.

It was a military concession enacted when the establishment realized they were losing the war.

THE COMPROMISE

Toussaint Louverture built a highly disciplined army of 20,000 men.

He beat the British military so badly, they lost more soldiers in Saint-Domingue than they did in the entire American Revolution that it forced the British to sign a secret treaty to evacuate.

To do this, Toussaint bypassed France entirely, negotiating directly with U.S. President John Adams for trade and weapons.

But creating a nation requires money.

To fund his military, Toussaint instituted “militarized agriculture,” violently forcing formerly enslaved people back onto the plantations to keep the sugar and coffee flowing in a system that was eerily reminiscent of slavery.

He proved Black leaders could execute nation-building foreign policy, but also revealed the brutal realities and agonizing compromises required to build that nation.

EXTERMINATION

Napoleon Bonaparte eventually sent an armada of 20,000 veteran troops under his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc.

Napoleon was furious because Toussaint was governing like an independent nation, but secretly he wanted to restore slavery.

The French even brought hunting dogs specifically trained to eat Black prisoners.

In June 1802, a French general invited Toussaint to a meeting under a flag of truce.

It was a trap.

Toussaint was chained, dragged onto a warship, and shipped to a freezing stone fortress in the Jura Mountains. Napoleon stripped his uniform, denied him firewood, restricted his food, and left him in solitary confinement to freeze and starve to death.

Knowing exactly how the French tortured their leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines took command and shifted to a war of absolute extermination.

Dessalines ordered his generals to “leave nothing white behind you.”

He burned Port-au-Prince to the ground, retreated to the mountains, starved the French troops, and let Yellow Fever ravage what was left of their army.

They shattered the myth of European military supremacy.

RANSOM

The United States, led by enslavers like Thomas Jefferson, watched this happen in real time and panicked. They were terrified that Black liberation would spread to the American.

The superpowers enacted a strict diplomatic blockade, refusing to recognize Haiti diplomatically until 1862.

Twenty-one years after independence, King Charles X of France sent 14 warships to Port-au-Prince. Under threat of a naval blockade and total war,

France forced Haiti to pay 150 million francs, roughly $21 billion today.

This debt wasn’t just for the land; it was to compensate French planters for their “lost property.” They forced the Haitian government had to pay the French for the bodies of their own citizens.

To make the payments, Haiti was forced to take out massive high-interest loans from the exact same French banks that were extorting them.

Why This Still Matters

The ultimate lesson of Haiti is that physical liberation was just the beginning.

The Haitians defeated the British, Spanish, and the French to establish their own nation.

Only to watch white supremacy pivot from military warfare to economic warfare just to ensure a free Black republic could never thrive. They ignored Haiti diplomatically and forced the nation to buy its own freedom in a multi-generational installment plan.

This history shows us that the current state of Haiti is not a failure of Black leadership, but the result of a 200-year revenge plot.

“In overthrowing me, you have done no more than cut down the trunk of the tree of the black liberty in Saint-Domingue; it will spring back from the roots, for they are numerous and deep.”

— Toussaint Louverture

Did anything in this book surprise you?

Drop a comment below or hit reply and let me know.

Housekeeping

Community Spotlight:

A special thank you to Amelia B. and Todd K., two of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Listen: The Black Man Who Bought Memphis

In 1866, a white mob shot Robert Church Sr. in the head and left him for dead. Twelve years later, when the Yellow Fever epidemic caused people to flee, Church used his cash to buy up prime real estate for pennies on the dollar.

If you would like to support my work with a one-time donation via my Buy Me a Coffee.

Donations

Subscribe now

The Freedom Library Book Club

The next book we’re reading is “Black against Empire” by Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin.

History loves to frame the Black Panthers as a militant street gang. The reality is that they were a highly organized political force that put their lives on the line for revolution.

This book details how they built power from the ground up, their fight against American imperialism, and the secret, illegal war the U.S. government waged to destroy them.

Grab the book and join the discussion.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

• Elaine Brown, “A Taste of Power”

• Mary Frances Phillips “Black Panther Woman”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

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America visualizes angry Black men in leather jackets with a love for violence.

That is a straight-up lie.

In 1969, the federal government refused to fund public school breakfast programs, leaving children to starve before the first bell.

The Panthers understood a hungry community couldn’t fight a revolution.

So, they built their own.

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Guerrilla Capitalism

To feed thousands of kids each morning, they needed capital.

White-owned grocery chains were extracting millions of dollars from Black neighborhoods while giving nothing back.

The Panthers knew greed was the only language the corporations spoke, so they decided to collect a tax.

They bypassed local managers to target regional distributors of major supermarkets and demanded weekly donations of eggs, milk, bacon, and bread.

It was a mandatory investment in the community.

When Safeway balked in Oakland, they distributed thousands of flyers and organized picket lines that choked off the store’s revenue.

No one was hurt, and no windows were broken, but they shattered the corporation’s bottom line. Faced with bleeding profits, executives signed formal agreements to fund the Survival Programs.

This wasn’t just a free breakfast; it was a highly convincing redistribution of wealth.

By the end of 1969, they were feeding over 10,000 Black children every single morning across 19 cities.

The Panic

J. Edgar Hoover didn’t panic over the rifles. He panicked over the grits.

In 1968, he called the Panthers the “greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

But in a 1969 memo, he pinpointed the actual problem, their Free Breakfast for Children Program.

You can easily convince white America to fear a Black man with a gun. But it’s hard to convince them to hate Black folks feeding hungry children.

Furthermore, Hoover realized the state wasn’t just losing a PR battle; they were losing the ideological loyalty of Black youth. While the children ate, the Panthers taught them Black history and liberation.

They were teaching future revolutionaries of tomorrow over breakfast

A group of young radicals with zero federal funding was doing exactly what the richest nation on earth claimed it couldn’t afford to do.

In a Senate hearing, officials admitted the Panthers were feeding more children than the entire state of California.

To eliminate this political leverage, the FBI sabotaged the program. Agents harassed churches and intimidated grocery stores.

The FBI even forged letters and distributed fake flyers to parents, claiming the Panthers preparing the food were infected with syphilis and tuberculosis.

The United States was publicly embarrassed and backed into a corner.

To compete with the Panthers, Congress was forced to drastically increase funding and permanently expand the USDA’s public school breakfast program.

Beyond Breakfast

The breakfast program was just the tip of the spear.

The Panthers launched a nationwide network of over sixty “Survival Programs.” They didn’t just protest; they governed where the state failed.

While white hospitals turned Black patients away, Panther women built and managed the People’s Free Medical Clinics, launching the first national testing campaign for Sickle Cell Anemia. When the state isolated inmates, they chartered free buses to maximum-security prisons so families could visit.

They opened Liberation Schools, distributed winter coats, and operated their own free ambulance services.

They built the exact infrastructure the state refused to provide.

Why This Still Matters

The history books love to sanitize the movement.

They want you to remember the Panthers merely as a tale of radical violence, not as the architects of a social safety net.

They want you to forget that the Black Panther Party engineered highly organized Survival Programs that the federal government claimed were impossible.

They didn’t just serve food and open clinics; they embarrassed the system.

By feeding tens of thousands of starving kids daily, they publicly humiliated a reluctant Congress into providing a breakfast program. When the white medical establishment ignored Sickle Cell Anemia, the Panthers backed Richard Nixon into a corner, forcing the federal government to finally pour millions into research and treatment.

Racism did what it always does, it tried to completely erase their brilliance. But if you only take away one thing, let it be this:

“Theory’s cool, but theory with no practice ain’t shit. We have a theory about feeding kids free. What’d we do? We put it into practice.”

— Fred Hampton

Community Spotlight:

I want to take a moment to shout out the community

A special thank you to Maggie B., and Jeff H., two of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Subscribe now

Listen: The Black Man Who Bought Memphis

In 1866, a white mob shot Robert Church Sr. in the head and left him for dead. Twelve years later, when the Yellow Fever epidemic caused people to flee, Church used his cash to buy up prime real estate for pennies on the dollar.

If you would like to support my work with a one-time donation via my Buy Me a Coffee.

Donations

The Freedom Library

I finished “Avengers of the New World” by Laurent Dubois, it completely shatters my expected narrative.

This weekend, April 4th, we are going deep into the book and the brutal and brilliant realities of a revolution.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

Sources:

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Elaine Brown, “A Taste of Power”

• Mary Frances Phillips “Black Panther Woman”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

History has comfortably framed her as a witness. A courageous, but ultimately powerless observer of Black history.

That’s a damn lie.

When the fight for Black survival reached a boiling point at the turn of the 20th century, the movement faced an issue.

White supremacists ran the South with violence, and white “allies” controlled the North with “respectability politics.”

Ida B. Wells understood this, and she took aim directly at the establishment.

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The “Old Threadbare Lie”

Wells didn’t just report on lynching; she approached it like a detective dismantling a murder case.

In 1892, a white mob in Memphis lynched three of her close friends, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart.

They didn’t assaulting anyone.

Their only "crime" was running the People’s Grocery, a booming business that pulled Black dollars away from the white-owned store across the street.

This proved what Wells already knew, lynching had absolutely nothing to do with justice. It was pure white terrorism.

This launched Wells into an unprecedented investigative crusade, tracking lynchings with the white establishment’s own data. Using the very statistics printed in white newspapers, with this data, she published the “Southern Horrors” and “A Red Record.”

Wells proved that less than a 1/3 of lynching victims were ever even accused of sexual assault.

She coined it the “old threadbare lie” as this manufactured myth of the Black male rapist, designed solely to provide moral cover for white mobs to murder Black people who became too economically or politically independent.

By using their own data, she stripped the South of its “protecting the virtue of white womanhood” lie in front of the world.

"Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women."

Dismantling Frances Willard

Once Wells exposed one lie, she set her sights on the white liberals who preserved it.

Enter Frances Willard, the president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. During that time, Willard was arguably the most powerful and influential white woman in America.

To appeal to Southern white members, Willard publicly blamed Black men for the “defeat of temperance” and parroted the exact same racist rhetoric of the old threadbare lie, describing Black communities as a multiplying, uneducated menace.

Most Black leaders were terrified to alienate Willard, blinded by her funding and her platform.

Ida B. Wells didn’t give a damn about her platform. She cared about the truth.

In 1894, Wells traveled to England to build international pressure against lynching. She found out Willard was also touring the country, soaking up the praise of the British elite.

During a speaking engagement, Wells stood on a stage in front of the British press, pulled out an interview Willard had given to a New York paper, and read Willard’s own racism out loud.

She publicly humiliated the most powerful white feminist in the world, on her own tour, in front of her own backers.

She severely damaged Willard’s international reputation and reminded us that white feminism built on the subjugation of Black lives is just racism with a new face.

The Showdown

Wells kept that exact same energy when she returned to American soil.

In 1913, suffragettes organized a massive historic march in Washington, D.C., but the leadership, specifically Alice Paul, were again terrified of losing the support of Southern white women.

So, they issued a directive, Black women were to march in the back of the parade in a “segregated” section.

Wells didn’t argue. She just waited.

She stood in the crowd until the march started. Then, as the white Illinois delegation passed by Wells stepped off the sidewalk, marched straight into their ranks, and planted herself right in the front between two white women.

Wells forced them to either acknowledge her presence as equals, or cause a very public ugly scene in front of the national press.

They backed down.

The Du Bois Check

But it wasn’t just the white establishment she had to humble.

Wells also went toe-to-toe with the Black male leadership, specifically W.E.B. Du Bois.

From the exact moment the NAACP was created, the leadership was obsessed with appearing palatable to wealthy white donors.

They viewed Wells as too aggressive, too uncompromising, and too Black.

The disrespect started before the NAACP even had a name. At their very first conference, when assembling the founding executive committee, they intentionally left Wells, the most knowledgeable lynching investigator in the entire country off the roster.

They handed seats to white moderates who had never investigated a single lynching, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with her.

Wells was never one to take an insult. She publicly called out Du Bois on his hypocrisy, then walked away and built her own organization.

She founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, the first Black women’s suffrage club in Illinois. While the NAACP was busy having cute committee meetings, Wells canvassed Chicago’s Second Ward and registering thousands of Black women to vote.

She created a political machine with enough voting power to overwhelm the local elections. Her club provided enough votes to single-handedly elect Oscar DePriest, the city’s first Black alderman.

Wells proved that if you insult her whether white or Black, not only is she going to call you out publicly, but she is going to beat you at your own game.

Why This Matters

The history books love to sanitize Black women.

They want you to remember them as quiet, patient martyrs waiting on white folks to find a moral compass.

They want you to view Ida B. Wells strictly as a writer, not the woman who took no shit from anyone, and famously told Black families that

“a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”

Her pen was her weapon, and her ink was bulletproof. The Winchester was just the backup plan.

So If you can only take away one thing, let it be this:

“I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”

Housekeeping

Community Spotlight:

I want take a moment to shout out the community.

A special thank you to Bryan L., and Lola T., two of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Subscribe now

Listen: The Black Man Who Bought Memphis

In 1866, a white mob shot Robert Church Sr. in the head and left him for dead. Twelve years later, when the Yellow Fever epidemic caused people to flee, Church used his cash to buy up prime real estate for pennies on the dollar.

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is “Avengers of the New World” by Laurent Dubois.

We are digging into the ultimate enslaved revolt: The Haitian Revolution.

This book breaks down how the enslaved population didn’t just riot; they beat three European empires and burned a corrupt system to the ground.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

Sources:

• Paula J. Giddings, “Ida: A Sword Among Lions”

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

White America loves to glorify men like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz, framing the underworld as a boys’ club.

If a Black woman is mentioned at all, she is usually reduced to a sex object or the background singer in some smokey Harlem speakeasy.

That’s exactly what the white establishment wants you to believe.

While the banking system was completely locking out Black folks, the community faced a massive issue, we lacked the capital and institutional backing needed to buy homes, start businesses, or build wealth.

Stephanie “Madame Queen” St. Clair was the solution.

She wasn’t just surviving the Great Depression; she was the “Boss of Harlem.”

She built an illegal banking empire and went to war with the mafia to protect it.

The Shadow Economy

So how does a Black immigrant woman in the 1920s build a financial empire in New York City?

She built her own bank.

St. Clair recognized that Wall Street was never going to serve Harlem.

So, when she took over the “numbers” an illegal daily lottery, the numbers wasn’t just another racket; it was an underground venture capital.

Because white banks refused to give Black residents loans, St. Clair’s policy bank (numbers headquarters) became the economic driver of Harlem.

People invested pennies for a chance to win six times their bet, enough to pay rent, buy groceries, or start their own businesses.

She employed dozens of runners, controllers, and clerks, creating Black employment for people that would have never been hired by a legal business.

By the late 1920s, Her empire was clearing a quarter of a million dollars a year, roughly about 5 million dollars today.

The Mob War

During the early 1930s, the end of Prohibition meant white mobsters were losing their lucrative bootlegging trade.

Mob boss Dutch Schultz set his sights toward Harlem numbers game and decided he was going to violently extract that money for himself.

Schultz assumed a Black woman would just fold under the threat of violence.

He severely underestimated his opponent.

“Madame Queen” Stephanie St. Clair didn’t run. She didn’t hide. She went to war.

When Schultz’s men started attacking her runners, she fought back without using muscle; she weaponized information.

St. Clair started tipping off the police to Schultz’s illegal storefronts, using law enforcement as personal muscle to take down her rival’s operations.

She even took out full-page ads in local newspapers publicly humiliating Schultz, exposing his tactics, and urging the Black community not to spend a dime with white mobsters.

Dismantling the Corrupt NYPD

It wasn’t just the Mafia she had to battle; she also had to take on the New York Police Department.

When corrupt cops tried to extort her or arrest her runners to appease the mob, St. Clair didn’t just pay them off, she snitched on them.

During the Seabury Investigations into police corruption, St. Clair stepped forward and testified. She provided exact names, dates, and amounts of the bribes she had paid to precinct officers.

Her documents led directly to the suspension and firing of over a dozen corrupt police officers.

A Black woman dismantled the NYPD using their own greed against them.

Biggest Flex

In the criminal underworld, there are really only two exits: a prison cell or a box.

Stephanie St. Clair did something impossible: She retired.

She knew when it was time to step back, handing the daily, violent operations of her numbers empire over to her trusted enforcer, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson.

Then she slid into the shadows.

St. Clair lived out the rest of her long life as a wealthy Harlem socialite and a fierce advocate for her people.

She spent her later years writing columns for local Black newspapers, continuing to call out police brutality, voting suppression, and political corruption.

When Stephanie St. Clair finally passed away in 1969, she wasn’t gunned down in a restaurant or locked in a cage.

She died quietly and peacefully of old age.

Why This Still Matters

The history books love to sanitize Black folks; they want you to remember Harlem only for its poetry and jazz, not the economic renaissance happening in the streets.

They only want you to talk about the heroes that turned the other cheek and held hands.

They want you to view St. Clair as a mere criminal, not the morally gray phantom capitalist who ran an illegal empire while protecting her community’s wealth from white extraction.

If they admit Stephanie St. Clair was a mastermind, they have to admit that a Black woman outsmarted both the Mafia and the NYPD simultaneously.

But if you only take away one thing, let it be this:

When Dutch Schultz was finally gunned down by his own syndicate in October 1935, he lay bleeding in a Newark hospital. While the rest of the underworld held its breath, a Western Union telegram arrived at his deathbed.

It read: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

It was signed: Madame Queen.

Housekeeping

Community Spotlight:

I want take a moment to shout out the community.

A special thank you to Lisa C. and Catya M, two of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Listen: The Black Man Who Bought Memphis

In 1866, a white mob shot Robert Church Sr. in the head and left him for dead. Twelve years later, when the Yellow Fever epidemic caused people to flee, Church used his cash to buy up prime real estate for pennies on the dollar.

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is “Avengers of the New World” by Laurent Dubois.

We are digging into the ultimate enslaved revolt: The Haitian Revolution.

This book breaks down how the enslaved population didn’t just riot; they beat three European empires and burned the system to the ground.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

Sources:

• Shirley Stewart, “The World of Stephanie St. Clair”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

But while the film is a supernatural horror set in 1930s Mississippi, it isn’t just about vampires.

It’s a reflection of America’s real-life monsters.

When twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) return to the Mississippi Delta in 1932, they aren’t just battling the undead.

They are navigating a meticulously rigged system designed to drain Black wealth with the same predatory hunger of any vampire.

This isn’t just the setting for a horror story.

It’s the reality of a Jim Crow South that designed its whole economy on the extraction of Black life.

The Flex

It’s 1932, When Smoke and Stack roll back into their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, but they don’t arrive in a Ford or a Cadillac.

They arrive in a C.R. Patterson & Son automobile.

This is a mostly overlooked detail. Charles Richard Patterson built the first and only Black-owned automobile company in American history.

By the late 1910s, his company was producing the Patterson-Greenfield, selling for around $850 (roughly $17,000 today).

But there is a catch, by 1932, the Great Depression had crippled their business, and the company hadn’t manufactured a car in over a decade.

For two Black men to drive a rare, vintage, Black-manufactured automobile into the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression was a bit more than transportation.

It was an act of defiance on wheels against a rigged white economic system.

The Labor Trap

The environment Smoke and Stack drove into was literally “slavery by another name.”

By 1930s, the sharecropping was another weapon of the racial hierarchy. Black tenant farmers were often paid in plantation scrip rather than actual currency.

This scrip was only good at the landowner’s plantation store, guaranteeing a perpetual cycle of insurmountable debt.

When debt servitude wasn’t enough, the state relied on physical chains.

Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) recounts in the film, how the chain gang was another calculated reincarnation of enslavement. It was even written in to the constitution.

The 13th Amendment banned slavery EXCEPT as punishment for a crime.

So Black Codes criminalized Black existence to funnel Black bodies into forced labor. These chain gangs drastically reduced infrastructure costs for Southern governments, building the roads and bridges of the Jim Crow South on the backs of Black prisoners.

The Juke Joint

By 1932, the white establishment controlled almost every aspect of Black life. So, Black folks engineered an underground sanctuary:

The Juke Joint.

To outsiders, these places were dismissed as just noisy, rural bars. In reality, they were vital, white-free spaces of Black expression.

They were built as a complete rejection of both the white gaze and the idea of “respectability politics” demanded by the Black church.

Inside those walls, the Delta Blues was the raw, unfiltered truth.

It was the sound of people who refused to be silenced, censored, or forced to assimilate into a white world.

When Smoke and Stack open their juke joint, they aren’t just having a party. They are building a fortress of Black expression.

However in America, any independent Black space always becomes a target.

The Irish Assimilation

Coogler saves his most brilliant historical metaphor for the villain, Remmick (Jack O’Connell). He isn’t just a vampire; he is also a centuries-old man of Irish descent.

This highlights an often-ignored reality of American racial history. In the 19th century, Irish immigrants were heavily marginalized by the Anglo-Protestant establishment and pushed to the bottom of the social ladder where they competed directly with Black folks for survival.

They were even sometimes called “inside-out Negroes.”

However, by the 1930s, the Irish had successfully assimilated into “whiteness.”

How does one gain entry into the establishment?

By fully adopting and enforcing the white power structure’s racism toward Black folks. Remick represents this transition. He trades his own marginalization for the power of his oppressor.

He then takes that power and aims it directly at Sammy (Miles Caton), the young blues prodigy.

Remmick’s vampiric obsession with Sammy’s talent is the embodiment of the entertainment industry.

Remmick invades Black spaces like the juke joint to extract and consume artistic genius. He represents the legacy of white folks commodifying Black artistry, profiting wildly from it, then discarding the artist.

They love your rhythm, but they always hated your blues.

The Predator in the Pulpit

Remmick mirrors the haunting reality of leaders who weaponized the Black community’s desperation for safe spaces.

He seduces his victims with the promise of liberation from racial terror, only to exploit the very people he swore to protect.

This mimics the predatory nature of charismatic cult leaders like Jim Jones. During the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, 918 people died following Jones' false promises, over 70% of his congregation were Black Americans people who had fled the racism of the United States looking for a "Promised Land," only to find a predator in the pulpit.

(Note: I want to give credit where it’s due, this connection was highlighted by the brilliant, )

The Racial Disguise

For some, the only escape from the relentless weight of Jim Crow was the total erasure of their Black identity.

In the film, Mary’s (Hailee Steinfeld) decision to pass as white isn’t just a plot point, it’s a reflection of the haunting survival tactic of “Passing.”

While passing offered physical safety and opened economic doors that were otherwise slammed shut, it was a “Social Death.” It required permanent exile from family, heritage, and community.

The Great Migration didn’t create passing, but destinations like Chicago and New York provided the anonymity required to pull it off.

In the small-town South, your lineage was everyone’s business; in the crowded North, the city became an arena for a daily masquerade, allowing people to trade their history just to be treated with some human dignity.

Why This Still Matters

Sinners demands that we look our monsters in the eye.

The real monsters weren’t the vampires, but the racial hierarchy and the system that used lynching and state-sanctioned terror to maintain its grip.

Coogler’s film taps into the heartbeat of the Black experience, one driven by the rhythm of the blues, the defiance of owning your own land, and the necessity of defending your family in the darkest of times.

Our history is not just a tale of survival; it’s a tale of resistance.

Because if the system won’t let you live like a man, it certainly can’t keep you from dying like one.

Housekeeping

Community Spotlight:

I want take a moment to shout out the community.

A special thank you to Darrell and Lola R., two of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Listen: The Black Man Who Bought Memphis

In 1866, a white mob shot Robert Church Sr. in the head and left him for dead. Twelve years later, when the Yellow Fever epidemic caused people to flee, Church used his cash to buy up prime real estate for pennies on the dollar.

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

Subscribe now

The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is “Avengers of the New World” by Laurent Dubois.

We are digging into the ultimate enslaved revolt: The Haitian Revolution.

This book breaks down how the enslaved population didn’t just riot; they operated as military strategists to outmaneuver three European empires and burn the system to the ground.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

Sources:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Michelle Cliff, “Free Enterprise”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

For over a century, history books have comfortably framed her as just “the help.”

That is exactly what she wanted them to think.

When the fight for abolition and civil rights reached the West Coast, the movement faced a massive logistical problem: they lacked the capital and inside intelligence needed to fight an entrenched white establishment.

Mary Ellen Pleasant was the solution.

She wasn’t just clearing plates; she was the ghost who infiltrated the white power structure to bleed it for intelligence and capital.

The Corporate Espionage Loophole

So how does a Black woman in the 1850s gain access to the financial strategies and vulnerabilities of the white elite?

She weaponizes their own arrogance.

Pleasant recognized that San Francisco’s power brokers, the mining tycoons, real estate moguls, and politicians assumed a Black woman in a servant’s uniform was uneducated and essentially invisible.

Arriving in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, she demanded an unheard-of $500 a month for her culinary skills, placing herself directly in the dining rooms of the city’s wealthiest men.

Because they believed her mind was incapable of grasping the complexities of finance, they openly discussed their most sensitive business moves, stock tips, and real estate strategies right in front of her.

Pleasant realized that being underestimated was the ultimate superpower.

She mapped the city’s financial landscape from the inside and turned their insider trading secrets into her own portfolio.

The Investment Network

In the 19th century, the legal system was designed to strip Black people of their wealth.

If Pleasant bought massive amounts of land and businesses openly, she would immediately become a target for the white establishment.

She built a phantom empire with corporate camouflage.

Pleasant didn’t operate under her own name. Instead, she partnered with a white banker named Thomas Bell, using him as a white public-facing proxy.

Through this front, she placed her capital in dairies, laundries, ranches, and substantial shares in Wells Fargo, amassing a joint fortune estimated at $30 million.

Yet the public had no idea she owned them.

She then transformed this financial network into a physical resource to help her people. She used her boarding houses as safe havens for the Underground Railroad, providing a physical infrastructure for freedom seekers arriving in California.

She wasn’t just a landlord; she was the head of a resistance network.

Financing the Revolution

When it was time to strike a blow for the movement, it was Pleasant who provided the war chest.

In 1858, she traveled to Chatham, Ontario, to meet with John Brown. She didn’t just offer him thoughts and prayers; she handed him a $30,000 check (nearly $1.2 million today) to fund the armed raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the raid failed and Brown was captured, authorities found a note in his pocket that read:

“The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” It was signed “M.E.P.”

Because her handwriting made the ‘M’ look like a ‘W’, the government spent years hunting for a white man named W.E.P.

They never once suspected a Black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant.

Why This Matters

The history books love to sanitize Black women; they love to put them in the “Mammy” box.

They want you to remember them as quiet and meek in an apron, not the phantom capitalist who controlled a $30 million empire and used insider trading to fund an armed insurrection against slavery.

If they admit she was a financial genius, they have to admit the system was outsmarted by the very people it tried to marginalize.

Racism and sexism tried to minimize her efforts, attempting to completely erase her role as a business woman and financier.

But if you only take away one thing, let it be this:

Mary Ellen Pleasant used the system’s own arrogance to bankroll a revolution

Housekeeping

Community Spotlight:

I want take a moment to shout out the community.

A special thank you to Jan G., Caroline B., and Shonte M., three of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Listen: The Black Man Who Bought Memphis

In 1866, a white mob shot Robert Church Sr. in the head and left him for dead. Twelve years later, when the Yellow Fever epidemic caused people to flee, Church used his cash to buy up prime real estate for pennies on the dollar.

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

Subscribe now

The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is “Avengers of the New World” by Laurent Dubois.

We are digging into the ultimate enslaved revolt: The Haitian Revolution.

This book breaks down how the enslaved population didn’t just riot; they operated as military strategists to outmaneuver three European empires and burn the system to the ground.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

• Laurent Dubois, “Avengers of the New World”

Sources:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Michelle Cliff, “Free Enterprise”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

A few days ago, we dug into The Autobiography of Malcolm X. At its core, it’s about liberation and transformation.

History likes to paint the movement as a strict binary: Martin Luther King Jr. as the “good and peaceful” leader and Malcolm X as the “angry and violent” counterpart.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X turns that whitewashed history on its head.

Malcolm wasn’t just a reactionary; he was the voice of the Northern Black working class. He proved that the “hustler” and the “intellectual” could be the same person.

His life is the ultimate manual on resurrection, proving that physical freedom means absolutely nothing if your mind is still imprisoned by your oppressor.

The Trauma

To understand the man, you have to look at the child.

It’s the 1930s. Malcolm is a top student in Lansing, Michigan, elected class president in a mostly white school. He tells his white adviser, Mr. Ostrowski, that he wants to be a lawyer.

Ostrowski tells him that being a lawyer is “no realistic goal for a nigger” and suggests he become a carpenter instead.

The state had already allowed white terror groups to murder his father and institutionalize his mother. But this quiet institutional “guidance” was the psychological last straw.

Malcolm dropped out and headed right to the streets.

Systemic racism operates on two fronts: the violent terror that destroyed his family, and the institutional manipulation that puts a cap on Black ambition.

He Changed the Game

Malcolm didn’t just survive the system; he took the survival skills he learned on the streets and weaponized them for the Black struggle.

Here are the core moments from our discussion:

The Street Hustle

In the 1940s, as “Detroit Red” in Harlem, Malcolm immersed himself in this underground economy hustling, running numbers, and enduring the agonizing pain of perming his hair into a “conk” just to make it look white.

He doesn’t glorify this era, but he doesn’t apologize for it, either.

He realized that the ghetto wasn’t a moral failure; it was a trap of the white power structure. He often wondered how many of these men would have been business owners and CEOs, if given the chance.

The street hustler was just a Black man applying white capitalist survival skills in a rigged system.

The Dictionary Heist

Sentenced to 10 years in prison for burglary in 1946, Malcolm was so full of rage that the guards nicknamed him “Satan.”

Through the Nation of Islam, he experienced an awakening, but realized he lacked the vocabulary to articulate his thoughts on paper. So, he requested a dictionary and copied it, page by page, A to Z, reading by the faint glow of a corridor light after lights out.

He read so much that it damaged his eyesight.

They put him in a cage to destroy him, and he used their time to weaponize the English language and build a foundation of knowledge.

The Global Pivot

After being exiled from the Nation of Islam around 1964, Malcolm traveled to Mecca. Praying alongside blond, blue-eyed Muslims, he realized that “whiteness” as a destructive force is an American construct.

He shifted his worldview. He never softened his stance on American racism, but saw racism as a global struggle.

By shifting his language from a domestic “Civil Rights” issue to a global “Human Rights” struggle, he bypassed Uncle Sam entirely to seek allies in other African nations.

True growth is having the understanding to change your mind.

Dictating His Own Death

In the final chapters, Malcolm knows he is a dead man walking. He is hunted, under FBI surveillance, and his home is firebombed with his family inside.

He explicitly tells Alex Haley that he knows he will not live to see the book printed, but he continues to urgently dictate it anyway.

He refused to go into hiding, and more importantly, he refused to let the media write his obituary unchallenged.

Malcolm X made himself a martyr on his own terms.

Why This Matters Now

Malcolm’s views of American racism remain flawless.

His warnings about the media’s power to manipulate the public into hating the oppressed feel like they were written yesterday.

Furthermore, the reality of his assassination proves the true function of the state.

COINTELPRO didn’t just surveil him; they actively stoked divisions between him and the Nation to neutralize him, and the FBI intentionally withheld documents to secure bogus convictions for decades.

At his core, Malcolm X wasn’t born a revolutionary. He was built by the harsh realities of 20th-century America, and then completely transformed himself into a force in the Black freedom struggle.

This autobiography isn’t just his life story. It is a blueprint.

Receipts

Housekeeping

Community Spotlight:

I want to start doing something a little different and take a moment to shout out the community.

A special thank you to Kimmy W., Heidi B., and Linda three of our paid supporters who help fund this work and keep this platform running.

I see you, and I truly appreciate it.

Listen: How They Got Rich on a $0 Salary

The Pullman Porters were the backbone of the railroad, but the system forced them to survive on tips. Here is how they took a $0 wage and built the Black Middle Class

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is Avengers of the New World by Laurent Dubois. We are digging into the ultimate geopolitical heist: the Haitian Revolution. This book breaks down how the enslaved population didn’t just riot; they operated as brilliant military strategists to outmaneuver three European empires and burn the system to the ground. I have another meeting date coming up soon.

Additional Reading:

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

• Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Black Against Empire”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

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But when the Civil War broke out, the Union Army didn’t ask for her help because they were morally righteous.

They did it because they were blind.

Union generals were failing in the Deep South. Their white scouts stuck out immediately, their maps were useless, and the rivers were rigged with hidden Confederate explosives.

The Union realized their lack of intelligence was a massive tactical disadvantage.

So, they turned to Harriet Tubman.

She wasn’t brought in to carry a lantern. She was a weapon, recruited to do the one thing the Union generals couldn’t do.

Infiltrate the Confederacy and build an espionage ring.

The Intelligence Blindspot

Tubman saw the Union’s vulnerability and weaponized the South’s arrogance.

She knew that in the Deep South, an enslaved person was practically invisible to the Confederacy.

The plantation owners wouldn’t think twice about openly discussing military strategy and troop movements right in front of the people serving their food, essentially treating them like pieces of furniture.

Tubman realized that Black folks were the only people on earth who could actually map the Confederate defenses from the inside.

The Phantom Network

When the Union gave her funding, she didn’t just stand on the sidelines

She built a network of formerly enslaved river pilots, scouts, and spies.

They didn’t march in uniform; they operated entirely in the shadows.

Her network mapped every single underwater mine the Confederates planted in the river.

An operation that was only made possible because the enslaved men in her network were the exact people the Confederates forced to plant the explosives in the first place.

She wasn’t just a scout, she was the head of a intelligence agency.

The Combahee River Raid

Tubman’s intelligence was flawless. But when it was time to strike, she was right in the middle of the action.

On June 2, 1863, working alongside Colonel James Montgomery, Tubman stood at the helm of a Union gunboat.

She became the first woman in United States history to plan and command a major military assault.

Guided entirely by her spy network, the Union ships bypassed every single hidden explosive. They caught the Confederates completely off guard.

They decimated the supply lines and burned the plantations to the ground

They liberated over 700 enslaved people in a single night and completely destroyed millions of dollars in Confederate infrastructure.

Why This Matters

The history books love to sanitize Black women, they love to put Black women in a tiny box.

They want you to remember a quiet woman sneaking through the woods, not a military commander who destroyed the Confederate war machine.

If they admit she was a tactical genius, they have to admit the system was outsmarted by the very people it tired to enslave

Racism and sexism did what it always does, minimize the efforts of amazing Black women. In this case it, tried to completely erase her military history.

But if you only take away one thing, let it be this:

Harriet Tubman didn’t just fight the system. She dismantled it using their own ignorance.

Housekeeping

Listen: How They Got Rich on a $0 Salary

The Pullman Porters were the backbone of the railroad, but the system forced them to survive on tips. Here is how they took a $0 wage and built the Black Middle Class

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library Update

We are going Live this weekend discussing: The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.

We aren’t just reading a biography; we are analyzing the blueprint of how a man born out of tragedy transformed from Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, this is the ultimate story in self-creation.

Mark Your Calendars: Date: Saturday, March 7th

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Sources:

• Milton C. Sernett, “Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History”

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

But that is a comfortable lie.

It wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a good job wrapped in a glass ceiling. The “System” wanted Black men to have just enough income to stay quiet, but never enough power to give orders to white folks or actually influence policy.

Enter Rowe R. Motley.

He wasn’t just a letter carrier. He was a 1st Lieutenant in the Army and a Korean War veteran. He had already led men in combat and knew how operations should be run.

But when he applied for a Customer Relations supervisory job in Charlotte in 1968, the establishment panicked.

Management looked him in the eye and delivered this exact quote:

“You’re a good carrier but you’re colored, and Charlotte is not ready for colored to have this job.”

The system expected him to lower his head and accept his place.

Instead, he immediately resigned and decided to burn the glass ceiling to the ground.

The Pivot

As a federal employee, you are bound by the Hatch Act, which strictly limits your political power.

Motley realized the Post Office wasn’t a career, It was a limitation.

He wasn’t going to beg for their grace. He wanted to build an economic oasis outside of their control.

He launched Motley Real Estate and Insurance, an incredibly rare move for a Black man in the 1960s Jim Crow South.

Later, growing globally, forming Motley International to export grain, rice, and shoes.

He even crossed into the arena of federal science creating Graham Research, securing a government grant, and patenting a prototype to decontaminate radioactive materials.

The Postal Service told him he wasn’t qualified for management. Just few years later, he was building an empire.

The Smoking Gun

Motley didn’t let the Post Office off the hook.

He lived in McCrorey Heights, Charlotte’s premier neighborhood for Black professionals. His neighbor was Oren McCullough, another Black postal worker.

Together, they waged a war on two fronts. They compared notes. McCullough filed formal complaints from the inside, while Motley went on the record from the outside about exactly what management said to him behind closed doors.

When the legendary civil rights attorneys from Julius L. Chambers’ law firm (specifically James Ferguson and Louis LeSesne) launched the landmark 1973 class-action lawsuit against the USPS (Chisholm v. United States Postal Service), they faced a massive hurdle.

The federal government is incredibly hard to beat in court. The lawyers needed undeniable, ironclad proof that the system wasn’t just “accidentally” overlooking Black talent, but intentionally blocking it.

Motley wasn’t the lead plaintiff because he had already beat the system. But he gave the attorneys the exact weapon they needed to lift everyone else up.

He allowed his 1968 rejection and the exact quote from management to be entered as foundational evidence.

His name is on the record.

His refusal to stay quiet became the exact legal leverage that eventually forced the Charlotte Post Office to pay out massive back pay and completely dismantle the discriminatory promotion system that left Black men behind.

The Institutional Takeover

While James Ferguson and Louis LeSesne dismantled his old bosses, Motley decided to step into the political arena.

Free from the Hatch Act, he helped launch Charlotte’s Black Political Caucus.

In 1974, just six years after the Post Office told him Charlotte “wasn’t ready” for him, the voters of Mecklenburg County elected him as their first Black County Commissioner at-large.

He went directly from beating the government, to becoming local government.

He went on to become the first Black National Democratic Committeeman from North Carolina and chaired the DNC’s Black Caucus.

But his ultimate political ascension came in 1981.

When State Senator Fred D. Alexander passed away, it left a massive political void in Charlotte.

The state wasn’t just looking for a politician to fill his seat; they needed a titan who could carry on his legacy.

They chose Rowe Motley.

Why This Matters

We talk a lot about Black history here. We talk about the titans who fought Jim Crow and built empires.

We talk about men who acquired the real estate and the political power to legally govern the cities that tried to break them.

We talk about men who built the exact blueprint for what happens when you refuse to accept the white man’s limits.

But the vision for One Mic didn’t just appear out of thin air.

My love for this history comes from resting on the shoulders of my ancestors who lived it. These stories of Black agency and empowerment are literally in my DNA.

Do you know why I understand the playbook so perfectly?

Because Rowe R. Motley was my grandfather.

Hit Reply: Did you know I’m kin to NFL Hall of Famer Marion Motley? Maybe...

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Housekeeping

Listen: How They Got Rich on a $0 Salary

The Pullman Porters were the backbone of the railroad, but the system forced them to survive on tips. Here is how they took a $0 wage and built the Black Middle Class

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library Update

We just finished Black AF History, proving that our ancestors were architects, not victims. Now, we move on to a classic.

Next Up: The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.

We aren’t just reading a biography; we are analyzing the blueprint of how a man born out of tragedy transformed from Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, this is the ultimate story in self-creation.

Mark Your Calendars: Date: Saturday, March 7th

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Sources:

• 1726 Madison Avenue

• Chisholm v. United States Postal Service

• Obituary

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

But that is a bald-headed lie.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy didn’t integrate the Secret Service because he cared about diversity.

He did it because he was terrified.

The “System” around him was collapsing. His detail of “Good Ol’ Boys” was hungover, sloppy, and loyal to the establishment, not to him. JFK realized his own bodyguards were a security risk.

So how did he try to fix it? He didn’t. He tried to bypass them. Kennedy wasn’t looking for a “token” Black man.

He was looking for a Shield.

Enter Abraham Bolden. He wasn’t a diversity hire. He was an asset, a weapon recruited to do the one thing the white agents wouldn’t do:

Stay sober and actually watch his Six.

The Rival Visions

In 1961, the Secret Service wasn’t the elite force you see in movies.

It was a frat house.

Agents were known to drink on duty. They chased women when they should have been chasing threats.

Kennedy saw his detail rotting from the inside. He famously asked his chiefs a question that sounds like it’s about race, but it was really about loyalty:

“Where are the Negroes?”

Kennedy knew that in America in 1961, a Black man in the White House had no allegiance to a white “System.” He wouldn’t be part of the “Good Ol’ Boys” club because they wouldn’t let him in.

JFK realized that a Black agent was the only person on earth who would actually be loyal to the President.

The “Loyalty” Loophole

Abraham Bolden was a sharp, unrelenting detective from the Illinois State Police.

When Kennedy hand-picked him, Bolden didn’t arrive just to stand in the background. He was there to tighten the perimeter.

He executed a level of discipline the white agents hated. He didn’t drink. He didn’t fraternize. He treated the job with gravitas. He wasn’t just a bodyguard; he acted like Internal Affairs, and that made him very dangerous.

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The Hardware of Betrayal

Bolden witnessed agents drinking before presidential motorcades. He saw them leaving posts unguarded.

But when Bolden threatened to report this lax security to the Warren Commission, the “System” snapped shut.

They didn’t just fire him. They tried to erase him.

In 1964, Bolden was charged with soliciting a bribe from a counterfeiter.

It was a lie.

The witness later admitted he perjured himself at the government’s request, but the damage was done.

They sentenced the President’s only loyal shield to six years in prison.

Why This Matters

On November 22, 1963, the agents in Dallas were reportedly hungover. Their formation was loose. The windows were open.

If Bolden had been there, history could have been much different. Bolden has always maintained that the exact lax security he fought against is what allowed Lee Harvey Oswald to succeed.

Racism didn’t just ruin Abraham Bolden’s career. It compromised the nation.

In 2022, President Biden finally pardoned Abraham Bolden, acknowledging the miscarriage of justice.

But if you only take away one thing, let it be this:

The System didn’t fail. It worked exactly as designed, and it cost the President his life.

Hit Reply: Did you know about the plot to erase Abraham Bolden before today?

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Housekeeping

Listen: How They Got Rich on a $0 Salary

The Pullman Porters were the backbone of the railroad, but the system forced them to survive on tips. Here is how they took a $0 wage and built the Black Middle Class

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library Update

We just finished Black AF History, proving that our ancestors were architects, not victims. Now, we move on to a classic.

Next Up: The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.

We aren’t just reading a biography; we are analyzing the blueprint of how a man born out of tragedy transformed from Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, this is the ultimate study in self-creation.

Mark Your Calendars: Date: Saturday, March 7th

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Sources:

• Abraham Bolden, “The Echo from Dealey Plaza”

Socials

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But that’s a marketing brochure. It is not history.

In the mid-1800s, most American whiskey was “swill.” It was harsh, raw, and burned the throat. The white distillers knew how to ferment corn, but they didn’t know how to refine it.

It was damn near undrinkable.

So how did Tennessee Whiskey become the global standard for smoothness? It didn’t happen by accident.

It happened because of a specific chemical process introduced by an enslaved “Master Distiller” named Nearest Green.

The Paradox

When a young, orphan Jack Daniel was sent to work at the Dan Call farm, he wasn’t taught the trade by the white owner. Dan Call pointed to an enslaved man named Nearest Green and said:

“Uncle Nearest is the best whiskey maker that I know of.”

Green wasn’t a “helper.” He was the CTO. He possessed the specific technical knowledge that this white enslavers lacked.

The Hardware of Mastery

They call it the “Lincoln County Process,” but that is just a brand name.

In reality, it was West African filtration technology.

In West Africa, villagers had used charcoal to filter water and purify food supplies for centuries. Nearest Green applied this same “Charcoal Leaching” technology to the whiskey. He ran the raw spirit through ten feet of sugar-maple charcoal before aging it.

This wasn’t “labor.” This was chemical engineering.

The charcoal acted as a molecular filter, removing the harsh oils that the white distillers couldn’t figure out how to eliminate.

Nearest Green didn’t just “help” Jack Daniel.

He provided the knowledge that made the product palatable.

The Receipt

Jack Daniel recognized the genius. After Emancipation, he hired him as the first Master Distiller of the Jack Daniel Distillery.

Today, Jack Daniel’s is the best-selling American whiskey in the world, valued at over $6 Billion. But the flavor profile he very thing that legally distinguishes “Tennessee Whiskey” from “Bourbon”

Is Built on African Technology.

Why This Matters

We often talk about the physical toll of slavery, the cotton picked and the rails laid.

But we rarely talk about the Intellectual theft.

The smoothness of America’s most famous drink came from the mind of a man who wasn’t allowed to own his own body. We weren’t just the farmhands hauling the grain.

We were the brains of the operation.

Did you know the story of Uncle Nearest?

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Housekeeping

Listen: How They Got Rich on a $0 Salary

The Pullman Porters were the backbone of the railroad, but the system forced them to survive on tips. Here is how they took a $0 wage and built the Black Middle Class

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library Update

We just finished Black AF History, proving that our ancestors were architects, not victims. Now, we move on to a classic.

Next Up: The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.

We aren’t just reading a biography; we are analyzing the blueprint of how a man born out of tragedy transformed from Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, this is the ultimate study in self-creation.

Mark Your Calendars: Date: Saturday, March 7th

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Sources:

• Fawn Weaver, “Love & Whiskey”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

Get more from Michael Motley in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Read more

We dug into a book that doesn’t just write about history, it corrects the math.

Most history books treat Black folks as victims, sidekicks, or footnotes. They frame our freedom as a “gift” from white benevolence, or the result of America suddenly finding its conscience.

Michael Harriot turns that idea on its head.

He proves that Black history isn’t a story of “unskilled labor” or passive survival. It is a history of unauthorized genius. We weren’t just the labor; we were the architects, the engineers, and the hackers who constantly upgraded a country designed to delete us.

The Foundation of Theft

To understand the theft, you have to look at the Origin Story. We are taught that enslaved Africans provided the “brute strength” while Europeans provided the brains.

Harriot pulls the receipts to show that we were the labor and the brains

When the settlers in Jamestown were starving and resorting to cannibalism, it was the Indigenous people and later the enslaved Africans who kept them alive.

The colonists didn’t know how to farm this land. We did.

Take the “Rice Coast” of South Carolina. Charleston became the wealthiest city in the colonies not because of British ingenuity, but because West African women brought the technology of rice farming with them.

The levees, the sluices, and the tidal irrigation systems—that was West African engineering. The “Task System” and the Gullah-Geechee language weren’t just culture; it thrived outside of the white gaze

The Hacker Narratives

The system tried to pathologize our resistance. They literally invented a fake disease called “Drapetomania” a mental illness that supposedly caused enslaved people to run away. But while they were inventing pseudoscience, we were hacking the code.

My favorite example was Onesimus. The story says that Cotton Mather was the genius who saved Boston from smallpox in 1721.

The truth is that Mather was clueless until Onesimus, an enslaved man, taught him the African practice of inoculation. While white doctors were bleeding patients to death, an enslaved man introduced the medical science that saved the entire city.

We saw this same “hacking” during the Civil War. It wasn’t just Lincoln who freed us. It was the “General Strike” of enslaved people running to Union lines that forced the government’s hand. It was Robert Smalls stealing a Confederate gunboat and Mary Louvestre stealing the plans for the ironclads.

We didn’t wait for freedom; we forced it.

The Reconstruction Heist

We are often told that Reconstruction “failed.” But Reconstruction didn’t fail.

It was robbed.

For a brief window, we had the Freedmen’s Bureau, we had schools, and we had Black majorities in legislatures. We were winning.

Then came the Compromise of 1877. The North traded the presidency for the return of white supremacy in the South.

Ida B. Wells saw the game clearly. She realized that when you follow their rules and succeed (like the Black owners of the People’s Grocery) they don’t congratulate you.

They burn it down.

She taught us the “Something Else” rule: When you prove the system wrong, it will always pivot to “something else” to justify your oppression.

The Blueprint

We ended with the “Receipts” of the 20th century. Even in the darkness of Jim Crow, women like Mary Ellen Pleasant (the Black capitalist) and Ella Baker (the strategist) were building the infrastructure of freedom.

The government was aware of this power, which is why COINTELPRO wasn’t just a theory; it was policy.

Their stated goal was to stop the rise of a “Black Messiah” and prevent coalitions. From the floor plans of Fred Hampton’s apartment to the surveillance of today, the tactics still remains the same.

Why This Matters Now

Black AF History brings the book full circle to the present day. He details the $156 Billion in lost Black home value due to redlining and the $23 Billion annual funding gap in our schools.

This isn’t about dwelling on the past. It’s about calculating the bill.

We aren’t asking for charity. We are asking for the balance due.

This book reminds us that we don’t need a “seat at the table.” We built the table. Now, we just need America to pay the bill.

Hit reply and tell me: What is your favorite chapter from Black AF History, let me know in the comments

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HouseKeeping

Listen: How a Barber Stole the Blueprint from Millionaires

In 1898, the American financial system had a specific label for Black people: “Uninsurable.” But John Merrick, a barber in Durham, NC, had a different plan. While shaving the throats of the South’s most powerful white titans, He was stole their blueprint and created his own business.

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library Update: The Sovereign Mind

We just finished Black AF History, proving that our ancestors were architects, not victims. Now, we move on to a classic.

Next Up: The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.

We aren’t just reading a biography; we are analyzing the blueprint of how a man born out of tragedy transformed from Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, this is the ultimate study in self-creation.

Mark Your Calendars: Date: Saturday, March 7th @ 3 PM ET.

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

• Alex Haley, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

Get more from Michael Motley in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

That is a bald-headed lie.

In the early 1700s, South Carolina was a failed corporate experiment. British planters had the land and the capital, but they were bankrupt on the knowledge.

They tried to grow silk. They tried grapes. They tried indigo. Every single crop died in the mud. The “System” was collapsing.

So how did it survive? It didn’t. It was saved by a heist of African engineering.

They call it “labor,” but that name is an insult.

In reality, the Southern economy was built on a highly sophisticated industrial technology, a proprietary system smuggled in the minds (and hair) of the Black people the system tried to own.

The Rival Visions

The British realized they needed a map to the swamp. They stopped looking for “hands” and started hunting for Engineers.

They specifically targeted people from Africa’s “Rice Coast” modern-day Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leone. They didn’t just need bodies; they needed the only people on earth who could tame the tides.

These African engineers executed a transformation of the landscape that changed the global economy. They realized that the ocean’s pressure wasn’t a threat; it was an engine.

The “Hair” Loophole

The British had the ships, but we had the asset.

West African women knew they were being taken into the unknown, so they executed a plan to ensure their survival. They braided rice seeds into their hair before being forced onto ships.

They didn’t arrive empty-handed; they arrived carrying the Source Code of the entire economy.

They ensured that wherever they landed, they owned the means of production.

The Hardware of Mastery

The “Carolina Gold” rice empire wasn’t just a farm; it was a hydraulic machine.

• The Earthworks: The massive tidal estuaries of the Lowcountry were terraformed into perfectly level grids.

• The Trunks: The wooden sluice gates—the literal hardware of the operation.

These “Trunks” were an industrial computer. They used the rising Atlantic tide to push freshwater from the rivers up into the fields, while locking the saltwater out.

It was a closed-loop system and the Gullah-Geechee people were the only ones who knew the password.

Operational Autonomy

Because the technology was so specialized, the Gullah people maintained a level of sovereignty that was unique in the South.

They lived on isolated “Rice Islands” where the planters were too afraid of malaria to venture. Because the “System” couldn’t function without African engineering, the Gullah maintained their own language, their own laws, and their own culture.

They didn’t just survive the plantation; they were the only reason the plantation existed.

Why This Matters

“Carolina Gold” rice made Charleston the wealthiest city in the colonies. It built the mansions, the banks, and the silver platters.

But the wealth didn’t come from the land. It came from the Intellectual Property of the enslaved.

In the end, machines killed the mastery. Once industrial pumps were invented in the 20th century, that specialized African knowledge was no longer needed for profit. The system moved west, and the mastery was forgotten.

But today, we are left with a powerful receipt: Enslaved Black folks weren’t just the labor. We were the R&D Department.

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Listen: How a Barber Stole the Blueprint from Millionaires

In 1898, the American financial system had a specific label for Black people: “Uninsurable.” But John Merrick, a barber in Durham, NC, had a different plan. While shaving the throats of the South’s most powerful white titans, He was stole their blueprint and created his own business.

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library Update

Most history books treat Black folks as victims, sidekicks, or footnotes. They frame our freedom as a gift, rather than our struggle.

Michael Harriot wrote the remedy.

This weekend, the Freedom Library Book Club is going live to discuss: Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot.

Join the Live Discussion: Date: Saturday, Feb 7th EST.

Live Stream!

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

• David J. Garrow, “Bearing the Cross”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

If you went to public school in the 80s, you know the sound. Those squeaky wheels rolling down the hallway usually meant a movie day. It meant we were escaping the curriculum.

But today, it meant we were going to watch history.

Christa McAuliffe was about to become the first teache…

Read more

They are currently passing through the South. People are lining the highways to offer them water, food, and smiles. It is a viral moment of pure, unadulterated peace.

It is beautiful, but it also makes me think.

When I see those orange robes moving safely down a Southern highway, I see a luxury. I see the contrast between “Walking for Peace” and “Walking for Survival.”

The Rival Visions

We are taught that the Civil Rights marches in Selma, Montgomery, Jackson were just like the monk walk: peaceful, symbolic parades where people sang hymns until the laws changed.

That is the “Whitewashed Version” of history.

The reality is that for Black Americans in 1966, walking down a highway wasn’t a spiritual journey. It was a hostile invasion.

It was closer to a military operation than a parade.

The March Against Fear

In June 1966, James Meredith (the man who integrated Ole Miss) set out to walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. He didn’t call it a Peace Walk. He called it the March Against Fear.

His goal was psychological: To prove that a Black man could walk through the South without fear.

He lasted just TWO days. On the second day, a white man stepped out of the bushes and shot Meredith with a 16-gauge shotgun.

Deacons for Defense

This is where the textbook usually ends: Meredith got shot, isn’t that sad?

But they didn’t stop the walk. The “Big Three” of the movement Dr. King, Floyd McKissick, and Stokely Carmichael rushed to the scene to finish what Meredith started.

But they didn’t just walk. They changed the rules of engagement.

Unlike the monks, who rely on the kindness of strangers, the marchers in 1966 relied on the Deacons for Defense.

These were not non-violent protesters. These were Black veterans from World War II and Korea. They didn’t carry flowers; they carried rifles and handguns.

When the State Police went home at night, the Deacons took over.

They patrolled the perimeter of the campsites with rifles on their shoulders. They ensured that what happened to Meredith on the highway didn’t happen to Dr. King in his tent.

They sent a clear message: We are not asking for permission to walk. We are taking the road.

Why This Matters

We love the monks because they represent a world where safety is assumed. But we must remember the men and women who bought that safety with lead and steel.

The March Against Fear didn’t just register voters. It was the march where, after being released from a jail cell in Greenwood, Mississippi,

Stokely Carmichael first induced the world to the words “Black Power.”

It transformed the act of walking from a plea for mercy into a declaration of ownership.

When you see the monks, appreciate the peace. and remember the Deacons who turned the American highway into a battlefield so that, One day, we all could walk without fear.

Hit Reply:

Watching the monks pass through North Carolina reminded me that history has seasons. There is a time to be a Monk, and a time to be a Deacon.

Have you been following their journey? Hit reply and let me know.

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Housekeeping:

Listen: How a Barber Stole the Blueprint from Millionaires

In 1898, the American financial system had a specific label for Black people: "Uninsurable." But John Merrick, a barber in Durham, NC, had a different plan. While shaving the throats of the South's most powerful white titans, He was stole their blueprint and created his own business.

If you would like to support my work with a one time donation via my Buy me Coffee

Donations

The Freedom Library

Black AF History by Michael Harriot. I’m nine chapters deep. The first few chapters bounce around the timeline a bit. But once you hit Chapter 3, the gloves come off.

Harriot dissecting the American myth with surgical precision.

The Plan: We are tentatively circling February 7th for our next meeting. If you are reading along, drop a comment with your thoughts

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

Martin Luther King wasn’t there to march. He wasn’t there to protest. He was there to do what any father would do in a war zone.

He stood at the counter, looked the officer in the eye, and applied for a concealed handgun permit.

This is the side of King the history books scrub out. We love the “Dreamer.” We forget about the man whose house had just been firebombed with his wife and baby inside.

Rival Visions:

Dr. King exists in the space between Myth and Survival.

We are taught that “Non-Violence” meant “No Guns.” We are told that King was naturally passive, a saint who floated above the danger.

In reality, King was practical. He knew the difference between aggressive violence and self-defense.

But Sheriff Mac Sim Butler looked at King’s application and denied it. He simply stated that King was “unsuitable” for a permit.

The irony was sharp enough to cut diamonds.

The law was supposed to protect citizens. Instead, it was weaponized to leave the most threatened family in Alabama defenseless.

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The Arsenal:

When the law failed, the community became the gun.

Since the Sheriff wouldn’t give King a permit, the men of the community organized a rotation. They didn’t just pray. They stood guard. Armed deacons and neighbors patrolled the King home 24/7.

They created a protective ring that bullies like the Klan were too scared to cross.

When Bayard Rustin, an advisor on non-violence, visited King’s home in February 1956, he didn’t find a quiet sanctuary. He almost sat on a pistol.

Rustin later described the King family home as “an arsenal.”

Eventually, Rustin convinced King to fully embrace the Gandhian practice of total non-violence. King removed the weapons. He realized it was contradictory for the leader of a non-violent movement to carry a weapon, even for his own self-defense.

Still, we must remember where he started. He started with a pistol on the table.

Why This Still Matters

We often use King’s memory to shame protestors today. We say, “King wouldn’t have done that. King was peaceful.”

But King wasn’t born a saint. He grew into one.

He grappled with the same fear for his wife and daughter that any of us would. His non-violence wasn’t a lack of ability to fight.

It was a disciplined, agonizing choice to put the weapon down.

That makes his sacrifice more powerful, not less. He had the option to shoot back. He chose not to. People often forget that “turning the other cheek” is only impressive when you have a hand to strike back with.

Hit Reply:

Did you know King applied for a gun permit? And does knowing he was armed in 1956 change how you see his bravery?

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Housekeeping:

Listen: The Town Where White People Were Illegal

Mound Bayou was a “fortress” built in the middle of the Delta that used a loophole in property law to ban white ownership and create a self-sustaining economy

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The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot.

We will hopefully have another meeting date around February 7th.

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

• David J. Garrow, “Bearing the Cross”

Socials

Threads| Website | Youtube

But we rarely talk about the road.

Imagine moving a 15-piece band through the back roads of Mississippi in 1950. You have $50,000 in cash, a bus full of instruments, and you are driving through the heart of the Jim Crow South.

You can’t stop at the hotel. You can’t put that money in a local bank. You can’t even use the gas station restroom.

So how did they survive?

They built a parallel space.

We call it the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” but that name doesn’t do it justice. In reality, it was a highly sophisticated logistics network of safe houses, clubs, and fixers that allowed Black culture to travel under the nose of a system that wanted it gone.

The Rival Visions

We needed our own map. So, entrepreneurs like Denver Ferguson and Walter Barnes began stitching one together.

They called it the “Chitlin’ Circuit.” The name came from chitterlings, the affordable soul food staple served at the venues. But it was also a riff on the “Borscht Belt,” the famous network of Jewish resorts in the Catskills.

But the Circuit wasn’t just one thing. It was a tiered empire:

• The Cathedrals: The “Big Four” theaters in the North—The Royal (Baltimore), The Regal (Chicago), The Howard (D.C.), and The Apollo (NYC).

• The Urban “Stroll”: The vibrant Black business districts like Beale Street in Memphis or Dowling Street in Houston.

• The Barns: The rural, dangerous outposts in the Deep South. These were literally tobacco barns, juke joints, and VFW halls where the floorboards shook and the law was (hopefully) far away.

This network was the only place in America where a Black person could be a star, a business owner, and a customer, all outside of the white gaze.

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How the System Worked

The “Paper Bag”: White banks in the South were hostile. They would freeze accounts or seize funds.

So, the Circuit ran strictly on cash. Deals were done in back rooms, and payouts were carried out in brown paper bags.

And here is the twist: A lot of that seed money came from running “The Numbers.”

It was a closed economy, illicit Black capital funding legitimate Black art.

The Fortress: Travel was the most dangerous part of the job. Bands like the International Sweethearts of Rhythm practically lived on their tour bus, which they called the “Iron Lung.”

It wasn’t just a vehicle; it was a mobile fortress. They ate, slept, and rehearsed on that bus because stopping in a “Sundown Town” could mean death.

The driver served as the chauffeur and the security chief.

The Hotel: While the Green Book listed hotels, the real intelligence network was word-of-mouth.

In cities like Memphis, women like Mrs. Reinie turned their homes into 5-star accommodations for stars like Duke Ellington.

These were safe harbors where a knock at the door meant fresh towels, not a threat.

The Gangster: In Houston, Don Robey ran the Bronze Peacock. He didn’t just own the club; he owned the record label (Duke-Peacock), the management company, and the booking agency.

He was known as a ruthless businessman who proved that Black autonomy didn’t always mean “polite.”

He protected his investments, and he ensured the show went on.

Why This Matters Now

The Chitlin’ Circuit gave us Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, and Otis Redding. It didn’t just give Black music a platform; it birthed American music.

But here is the hard truth. Integration killed the Circuit.

Once the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, white venues realized how much money Black stars were making. They opened their doors. Black artists, understandably seeking better pay, crossed over.

The Black-owned theaters and clubs that had nurtured them simply withered away.

We gained access, but we lost the infrastructure.

Today, when we see moguls owning their own work, labels, and studios, they are channeling the spirit of the Chitlin’ Circuit. They are remembering the powerful lesson we learned:

True power isn’t just being on stage; it’s owning the theater.

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Listen: The Town Where White People Were Illegal

Mound Bayou was a "fortress" built in the middle of the Delta that used a loophole in property law to ban white ownership and create a self-sustaining economy

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The Freedom Library

The next book we’re going to read for the book club is Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot.

We will hopefully have another meeting date around February 7th.

Additional Reading:

• Michael Harriot, “Black AF History”

• Timothy B. Tyson, “Radio Free Dixie”

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