One Mic Black History Newsletter
Today we tell the stories of Rosewood, Emmett Till & Twilight zone and Hank Aaron
Good Day, Fam, Welcome Back to One Mic History Newsletter. Thank you for joining us today. I appreciate you.
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The Destruction of Rosewood
On January 5, 1923, a mob of over 200 white men attacked the Black community in Rosewood, Florida, killing over 30 Black women, men, and children, burning the town to the ground, and forcing all survivors to permanently flee Rosewood.
On January 1, 1923, in Sumner, Florida, a young, married white woman named Fannie Taylor claimed she had been assaulted by Jesse Hunter, a Black man who had escaped a prison chain gang. Though there was no evidence against Jesse Hunter, local white men launched a manhunt in Rosewood, a nearby town of about 200 Black people. On January 2nd, a mob of white men kidnapped, tortured, and lynched Sam Carter, a Black craftsman from Rosewood, on suspicion that he had helped Jesse Hunter escape.
White men continued to terrorize Rosewood searching for Hunter and Black residents armed themselves in defense. Late on the night of January 4th, a white posse fired into the home of Black Rosewood resident Sylvester Carrier (whom they suspected of harboring Mr. Hunter) and killed an elderly woman. A gunfight between Carrier and the mob lasted into the early morning, killing people on both sides.
Outraged that Black residents had fought back, the posse left the scene to regroup and returned with more men. On January 5, a mob of between 200 to 300 white men attacked Rosewood, killing an estimated 30 to 40 Black men, women, and children on sight and burning the town to the ground. Black residents hid in the woods and the next day on January 6 a pair of brothers brought a train through Rosewood. They worked quickly and quietly to get Black women and children on the train to Gainesville, Florida,
January 7, 1923, the violent white mob reappeared. They systematically burned every Black-owned building in Rosewood and the Black residents never returned.
In the spring of 1994, the Florida state legislature voted to give $2 million in compensation for the nine surviving family members (equaling $150,000 each)and created an educational fund for their descendants.
In 1997, the John Singleton film Rosewood debuted about the events.
The Link between Emmett Till and Twilight Zone
In August of 1955, Emmett Till, a young African-American man from Chicago, was abducted, beaten, and killed while visiting family in Mississippi. The Aftermath divided a nation by race and The horrific images of the open-casket funeral, which were widely circulated by Jet magazine, shocked the nation and sparked the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement.
Rod Serling, a 30-year-old up-and-coming television writer and producer, was conscious of the potential for TV to be used for social good. He believed that writers had a duty to challenge their audience and reflect on the issues of their time. Serling noted that “the writer’s role is to be a menacer of the public’s conscience; he must have a position, a point of view and must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism.”
Off the back of his most successful teleplay to date, Serling felt the urge to write a teleplay about the racism behind the murder of Emmett Till. However, The advertisers and networks feared a negative reaction from white Southerners, leading to rewrites and censorship of his Teleplay.
Serling would later say, "From experience, I can tell you that drama, at least in television, must walk tiptoe and in agony lest it offend some cereal buyer from a given state below the Mason-Dixon.”
Ultimately, Rod Serling came to understand that it was difficult to directly confront issues such as racism and prejudice on television. This inspired him to create the iconic anthology series, "The Twilight Zone", where he could address social issues such as prejudice, bigotry, nuclear fears, and war through the use of metaphor and allegory.
The Birthday of Hank Aaron
On February 5, 1934, Henry Louis Aaron was born in Mobile, Alabama. Over the course of his 23-year career in Major League Baseball from 1954 to 1976, Aaron established himself as one of the greatest hitters the game had ever seen. He surpassed the records set by renowned hitters such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.
Aaron began his career as a professional baseball player in 1952 in the Negro American League, playing shortstop for the Indianapolis Clowns. He'd play with the Clowns for one season, helping lead the club to the 1952 Negro League World Series title, before the Milwaukee Braves purchased him from the Clowns for $10,000 and assigned to minor league teams. In 1953, Aaron broke the color barrier in the South Atlantic League with the Braves' minor-league affiliate, the Jacksonville Braves. They were one of the first integrated teams in the South Atlantic League.
Arron recalled "We were not able to stay with our teammates, we weren't able to change clothes in some of the ballparks with our teammates," "You realized that they were not right, but by the same token you felt like you had to do them in order to make things better for someone else who was coming behind you."
In 1954, Hank Aaron began his Major League Baseball career with the Braves, who had moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin by 1953. Despite the racism that followed him throughout his career, which lasted from 1954 to 1976, Aaron persevered and in 1956 he won the league batting championship with an average of .328. The following year, he was named the league's Most Valuable Player after leading his team to victory in the World Series. As he worked to break Babe Ruth's record for all-time home runs, Aaron endured relentless hate mail and threats to his life, To ensure his safety, Aaron was required to leave ballparks via the back exits and was accompanied by a police escort. His children were also subject to strict rules and limitations due to kidnapping threats.
"I got millions and millions of pieces of mail from people that were resentful simply because of the fact of who I was and they were just not ready for a Black man to break that record,"
April 8, 1974, in Atlanta, he hit his 715th, breaking Babe Ruth’s record, a record which had stood since 1935. After the 1974 season, Aaron was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers. Aaron retired following the 1976 season and rejoined the Braves as an executive. becoming the first Black American to hold a senior management position in major league baseball. January 13, 1982, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.
Thank you so much for joining us today, I hope you have a wonderful day, If you like stories like this you can find more stories like this at One Mic History.
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-Countryboi