Page 22 - Florida Sentinel 12-22-17

National
Historic True Slave Story Written By Floridian Zora Neale Hurston
To Be Released
Charlottesville’s Black Police Chief Abruptly Retires After Rally Response Criticism
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA —The first African-American police chief of Charlottesville, Virginia, abruptly retired Monday, about two weeks after a scathing independent review criticized his “slow- footed response” to violence at a white nationalist rally this summer.
In a brief statement, the city did not give a reason for Chief Al Thomas’ depar- ture, which was effective im- mediately.
“Nothing in my career has brought me more pride than serving as the police chief for the city of Charlottesville,” Thomas, 50, said in the statement. “I will be forever grateful for having had the op- portunity to protect and serve a community I love so dearly.”
Earlier this month, a for- mer federal prosecutor hired by the city released a report
Charlottesville, Virginia Po- lice Chief Al Thomas abruptly retired on Monday.
that was sharply critical of Thomas and other law en- forcement officials.
The report from former U. S. Attorney Tim Heaphy said Thomas’ response was “disappointingly passive” as the violence began to escalate on Aug. 12, the day of the “Unite the Right” rally that drew hundreds of white na-
tionalists from across the country. A woman was killed that day when a car plowed into a crowd of people who were peacefully protesting.
According to the report, as brawling broke out between rally attendees and counter- protesters, Thomas said, “Let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.”
Thomas did not recall making that statement, which was cited in accounts by two other police employees, though he confirmed he waited to “see how things played out” before declaring an unlawful assembly, the re- port said.
“Chief Thomas’ slow- footed response to violence put the safety of all at risk and created indelible images of this chaotic event,” the report said.
San Francisco’s New Mayor, London Breed
Conservative media outlets and their angry followers are maligning a Boston University theater professor on social media because she published a history of “Jingle Bells” that said it has racist roots.
But her research is part of a necessary examination into this county’s racist past that should not exempt Christmas traditions.
“The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history,” Kyna Hamill wrote in her re- search paper.
She added that “attention to the circumstances of its per- formance history enables re- flection on its problematic role in the construction of Black- ness and Whiteness in the United States.”
The first documented per- formance of the Christmas jin- gle, written by James Pierpont, was in blackface at a theater in Boston in 1857,
Jingle Bells was written by Confederate James Pierpont, who wrote the song during his teen years. It was later performed in blackface during post-Civil War days.
Hamill told a news outlet. James Pierpont and his wife, Eliza Jane, the daughter of Savannah, Georgia’s former mayor lived there at the begin- ning of the Civil War and joined the Isle of Hope Volun- teers of the First Georgia Cav- alry (later the Fifth Georgia Cavalry) of the Confederacy. Records indicate that he served as a company clerk. He also wrote music for the Confeder- acy, including "Our Battle Flag", "Strike for the South"
and "We Conquer or Die."
His father, however, was the
Union army’s chaplain sta- tioned in Washington, D.C.
A group of commercial blackface performers traveling between Boston and New York, singing the song during post Civil War.
Hamill, who’s White, is not calling for the death of “Jingle Bells.” What she’s doing should be seen in the same light as the movement to delve into the racist past at ed- ucational institutions. None of that changes the past, but a simple acknowledgement goes a long way toward healing.
Florida native and renowned Renaissance author, the late Zora Neale Hurston did not get to release the book during her lifetime, however the graphic account of the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade she interviewed extensively will now be released in May, 2018.
FLORIDA — A never-before- released Zora Neale Hurston book is now set to ar- rive in May, 2018.
The HarperCollins book, Bar- racoon: The Story of the Last Slave, is an unfinished work that tells the true story of "the last known survivor of the At- lantic slave trade that was ille- gally smuggled from Africa on the last ‘Black Cargo’ ship to ar- rive in the United States,” through a series of interviews.
Although Hurston, an Eatonville, FL native, is best known today for her fiction works like, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she also did quite a bit of research and jour- nalism during her life.
She won a Guggenheim fellowship to study culture and religion in Jamaica and Haiti, and reported on several impor- tant race and civil rights issues of her day.
The new book comes from field work Hurston conducted in 1927, when she went to Plateau, Alabama to interview 95-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Lewis was the last living American who had traveled to the New World in a slave ship.
Hurston interviewed Lewis multiple times over the course of four years.
He told her all about the raid that led to his capture, and about his bondage 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade
was outlawed in the United States.
Lewis' story is unique be- cause it represents a detailed account of a slave's life in Africa before bondage.
Lewis' narrative also de- tails the horrors of being held in a barracoon for selection by American slave drivers, the horrific journey of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 aboard the ship the Clotilde and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.
As has become her trade- mark, Hurston's detailed writings capture Lewis' unique vernacular, and Harper has already begun to suggest that this new book will join the writer's others in the hall of American classics.
You can visit The Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail in Fort Pierce, FL. It commemorates the life and times of the world-renowned Harlem Renaissance author, anthropologist, storyteller and dramatist, primarily when she lived in Fort Pierce, during the final years of her life.
Three large kiosks, eight trail markers and a recently- added exhibit and visitor in- formation center capture Zora memories in Fort Pierce and chronicle her travels through Florida and the Caribbean.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Fol- lowing the sudden death of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, the city’s President of the Board of Supervisors, London Breed, made history when she became the city’s first Black female mayor. The 43-year-old will carry on in the role until a city- wide mayoral election is held in the summer of 2018.
Breed is also only the sec- ond Black person to be mayor. The first was Mayor Willie Brown, who served from 1996 to 2004.
Aside from inheriting her role as mayor, she is also plan- ning to actually run for mayor
London Breed is the first Black woman mayor of San Francisco.
in the 2018 election. She told reporters, “I do feel strongly that I’m qualified and I’m pre- pared to do this job.”
Born and raised in San Francisco, Breed earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis in 1997 and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of San Francisco in 2012.
In 2002, Breed became the executive director of the African American Art & Cul- ture Complex, where she raised over $2.5 million to ren- ovate the complex’s 34,000 square foot space. She was named to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Com- mission in 2004, and in 2010, she was appointed to the San Francisco Fire Commission.
History Of Christmas Carol ‘Jingle Bells’ Is At Center Of Racism Controversy
PAGE 10-B FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2017