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May 21, 2015 – Segment 1
Marc shares some of the events that happened on this day in history, including the birth of the Notorious B.I.G and the abolition of slavery in Martinique.
Transcript of This Day In History included below.
This Afro Columbia Day celebrating the end of slavery in Colombia on this day in 1852, it also celebrates the village of Palenque de Sand Basilio that is the oldest free African community in America that began when Africans fled then led a revolt to free other Africans and forced the Spanish to recognize them in 1691. Many still speak the unique language created by the freed Africans called Palenquero that combines Bantu, Kongo, Spanish and Portuguese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEs5HJ0mEjw
And just two years later pro-slavery forces burned down Lawrence Kansas, in the midst of civil war in that state between pro and anti slavery forces Bloody Kansas as it was called began because anti-slavery Americans settle Kansas, founded it’s capital Lawrence. They drove out the Southern Sherriff, who came back with hundreds of men to kill the population and burn down the town.
On the heels of the deadly Franco-Prussian war, which France lost the citizens of Paris took over their city to found a revolutionary egalitarian socialist cooperative urban society that became known as the Paris Commune. This free republic only had control of Paris for two months from March 21stto May 22, for on this day in 1871 the French Army swept into unprotected portal and over the next two weeks slaughtered 20,000 Parisians fueled by their fear of these ideas of freedom taking hold.
1895 – William B. Purvis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania received patents number 539,542 for a magnetic car balancing device.
1927 – Charles Lindbergh touches down in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
1932 – Amelia Earhart makes an emergency landing in Derry, Northern Ireland, making her the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Almost 200 years to the day in 2001 after Napoleon reinstituted slavery the Taubira law was enacted by the French Parliament that officially recognized the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity. The law was named after Christiane Taubira-Delannon, a French politician born in French Guiana who was the driving force behind the law who has also been a a leading force for land reforms in the French Caribbean as compensation for slavery.
1847 – Isaiah Thornton Montgomery was born enslaved on Davis Island Mississippi in 1847. In 1877 he founded of the town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi in the Delta. While he was a very controversial figure Black folks ending up owning tens of thousands of acres till stolen away in the 1920’s and during the civil rights movement became a haven for Black journalists and activists..
