Stiretec

[Black Journals @blackJournals01]

One of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century died in a county welfare home and was buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery.

Her neighbours took up a collection for the funeral. It was not enough for a headstone. Zora Neale Hurston. 1960.

She had published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography and dozens of essays. She had travelled the South and Haiti collecting stories that would otherwise have been lost entirely. She wrote "Their Eyes Were Watching God" in seven weeks.

By the 1950s she was out of print and working as a maid in Florida. A newspaper found her in 1950 cleaning a house, and ran it as a human interest story: a once-famous author, scrubbing somebody's floor.

She had a stroke and went into the St Lucie County welfare home. She died there in January 1960, aged sixty-nine.

She was buried in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, the Black cemetery in Fort Pierce, in a plot nobody marked.

Thirteen years later a young writer named Alice Walker went to Florida to find her. She walked into a waist-high field of weeds and snakes, shouting Zora's name, until her foot sank into a depression in the ground.
She bought a headstone. It reads: "A Genius of the South."

Hurston is now taught in every American literature course in the country. Her books were out of print for a quarter of a century, and she went into the ground with nothing on top of her.

[rolandsmartin @rolandsmartin]

AMBER GUYGER PAROLED! Botham Jean Doesn't Get To Come Home. She Does.

[Black Americans @BLKAmericans_]

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced - James Baldwin

[The Clever Method @TheCleverMethod]

Genius maths hack

[Jeffrey Guterman @JeffreyGuterman]

On this date October 2 in 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first Black Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Photo by Youchi R. Okamoto, 1967. #OTD

[Esty_ @Esty_1980]

That look at the end is something else.

A sharp mix of race, identity, friendship, privilege, and campus politics. Every episode peels back another layer of what it means to be Black in a predominantly white institution.

[OldSchool @xacct01]

Roberta Flack ☆ Feel Like Makin' Love (1974)

[Black Americans @BLKAmericans_]

Langston Hughes, a year after his first book was published, at Tuskegee with Jessie Fauset and Zora Neale Hurston.

[Vonnetta L. West @VonnettaLWest]

Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. Brilliant minds. Literary giants. Bold hearts. We are better because they existed.

[AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY @AfricanArchives]

James Baldwin Response to “Why must you always concentrate on color?”

[Melodies & Masterpieces @SVG__Collection]

Today is the 21st of September.

[BLACK-MEDIA-HUB✊🏿 @BmediaHQ]

In 1959, police were called to a segregated library in S. Carolina when a 9yr-old Black boy refused to leave. He later got a PhD in Physics from MIT, and died in 1986, one of the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

The library that refused to lend him books is now named after him.

That boy was Ronald E. McNair. He graduated magna cum laude from North Carolina A&T before earning his doctorate from MIT at just 26. In 1978, he became one of the first Black astronauts selected by NASA and flew two Space Shuttle missions. What began with a child refusing to accept segregation ended with a scientist who helped expand humanity's reach into space.

[AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY @AfricanArchives]

"You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you."

—James Baldwin

[KID VICIOUS🔪 @kirkacevedo]

Damn…
I just found out Michael Wright passed away.🤦🏻‍♂️ A lot of our OZ family have gone to the other side. I worked with Mike for 6 years on OZ and we lived 2 blocks away from each other in Hells Kitchen.
I remember one hot summer day I went up to his place and had a beer on his fire escape as he told me stories of how he grew up. We then drove around in his vintage Rolls-Royce, freaking Good times!!
Mike was mesmerizing when he was on screen, his intensity, honesty, and of course that voice! A gifted man!

Miss you brotha!🙏🏼😪

[Strictly 4 My X’ers @Lizzs_Lockeroom]

Rest easy, Michael Wright 🙏🏾🕊💙

Eddie King.... or Eddie Kang, you left a lasting impression on all of us.....

[Brian4new @GustBrian]

Animals are amazing 👏

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

Don't harm opossums! They’re harmless and actually really useful. They keep pests in check (eating ticks, roaches, rats, and scorpions), clean up dead animals, and help spread seeds. Basically, they’re nature’s cleanup crew