Breath Of My Ancestors Minute 3-3-17

If COINTELPRO existed then what makes you think it doesn't exist now?
J. Edgar Hoover was Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III's hero.

Breath Of My Ancestors Minute 3-2-17

BOMA Minute03012017

Terrorism In Tulsa - We Must Never Forget

Ninety-Five years ago today the Black people of Tulsa Oklahoma went through an episode of terror that would make Manhattan on September 11, 2001 look like a stroll through Central Park. On May 31 a Black man made the mistake of getting on an elevator with a White woman which, on June 1,1921 unleashed a reign of terror that would destroy virtually every business on Black Wall Street. 

Within sixteen hours upwards of 300 black men, women and children were murdered, two Black hospitals were burned to the ground, more than 6000 Black people were arrested and more than 10,000 of their homes were destroyed. In excess of 35 city blocks with over 1250 residences were torched by terrorist and burned to the ground. 

Here is what we are up against. The Tulsa Riots of 1921 were deliberately left out of history books. The perpetrators and their decedents went to great lengths to make sure these terrorist acts were hidden. 

On August 16, 1916, Tulsa passed a city ordinance that declaring residential segregation making it against the law for blacks or whites to reside on any block where three-fourths or more of the residents were of the other race. Although the United States Supreme Court declared the ordinance unconstitutional the next year, it remained on the books. This forced segregation sparked the entrepreneurial spirit of the formerly enslaved Africans and by 1921 had constructed the thriving Greenwood District.

The ingenuity and skills of the Black population of Greenwood annoyed the Ku Klux Klan and the many settlers of the Oklahoma Territory who had migrated from the deep south. They viewed the prosperity of the so-called Negro as uppity and above their station. Between the Declaration of Statehood in November of 1907 and the Tulsa Riots in 1921 there were 31 reported lynchings. 

So, this coming September when the media bombards us with ‘Never Forget’ messages about the terrorist acts committed on American soil, as if they were the first. Please remember that they were not. African Americans have lived under the oppressive thumb of Terrorism for over 300 years. Our communities have been terrorized since we first established one on these shores. 

Don’t Get It Twisted. And please remember, WE MUST NEVER FORGET. http://db.tt/VTyPskeW 

Memorial Day In the Not-Yet United Sates

Post Thanksgiving Gratefulness 2014

An acquaintance says to me, “Black people should be grateful to America for all the opportunities she has provided for them. In spite of all the adversities, you have fared well.”

I gave that statement a great deal of consideration and decided to focus on the upside of it. In spite of all that has happened to black folk getting here, a great many of us are doing well. I focused on the word grateful and his declaration prompted me to wonder how much gratitude my Caucasian friend might have for black people being brought to America as their chattel slaves. Surely if I should be grateful for what America has done for me, certainly America should be reciprocally grateful for what my ancestors did for it, right?

I can’t recall hearing many stories about white people being grateful to black people for creating so much comfort in their lives. I don’t remember reading many stories about how instrumental black people have been in the creation of wealth in America.

So I thought I’d take this time to remind us all of how grateful we should be to our ancestors…

America’s Meal Ticket-The Enslaved African

Henry Blair – Sewer of Seeds

How would it make you feel to learn that Macy’s, Fruit of the Loom, Martha Stuart, Tommy Hilfiger, General Mills and a host of others owe all their fame and fortune to a black man from Montgomery County Maryland who was never taught to sign his name. Indeed the entire American agricultural industry rest on the shoulders of a little 5’ 5” dark complexioned black man with a green thumb.

If it weren’t for a freed son of an enslaved African, born in 1807 by the name of Henry Blair, most of us wearing designer jeans and multi-colored underwear, sleeping on 400 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, being warmed under quilted woolen blankets in the dead of winter would not be able to enjoy any of these creature comforts, had not this long forgotten genius loaned us his talent.

This little Black Maryland Farmer only lived to be fifty-three years old but America owes him a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. What is sad is that the admirable contributions he loaned this society and the world have been buried under an avalanche of miss-education, blatant and subtle racism. Hardly any of us know anything about this great man who signed his name with an X because it was illegal for him to read or write.

Henry Blair is the only inventor on record in the U. S. Patent and Trademark office listed as “a colored man.” On October 14^th 1834 he was awarded the patent for the Seed-Planter, which enabled farmers and growers to multiply their harvest many times over and increase the wealth of this country. Two years later, in 1836, he received the patent for inventing the Cotton Planter (http://www.blackinventors.org) which revolutionized the cotton industry.

Mechanics Magazine 1836 (Notes and Notices)Corn and Planting Machine - A free man of colour, Henry Blair by name, has invented a machine called the corn-planter, which is now exhibiting in the capital of Washington. It is described as a very simple and ingenious machine, which, as moved by a horse, opens the furrow, drops (at proper intervals, and in an exact and suitable quantity,) the corn, covers it, and levels the earth, so as, in fact, to plant the corn as rapidly as a horse can draw a plough over the ground. The inventor thinks it will save the labour of eight men. He is about to make some alterations in it to adapt it to the planting of cotton. - New York Paper.
From: The Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette; Publ. J. Cunningham, London (6 Aug 1836) Vol XXV, No. 661, page 320.
Retyped from copy Digitized by Google (source)

It is important for Black folk, young and old, to consider that this man was forbidden education and not allowed to develop his propensity. He was denied the resources that would have made him a giant had he been recognized. Just think of what Mr. Blair may have accomplished had he been encouraged to pursue his ideas with his ingenuity supported instead of suppressed. Imagine what else he may have invented had the playing-field been level and the color of his skin not been held against him.

A cursory search on Google turned up 166 manufacturers of cotton blankets and another search revealed 17,834 apparel companies, all of which owe Mr. Blair a debt of gratitude. But we need to also consider Delmonte and Green Giant, who sell peas, carrots and corn. The Wonder Bread Company, Kellogg and Post Cereals, Hunt’s Ketchup and Gulden’s Mustard owe Henry for helping them plant all those seeds. The list is as long and the Mississippi River.

The overwhelming majority of Black folk in this country have no clue as to how much their ancestors have contributed. They were taught that Blacks have always been shiftless and lazy. Slaves were beaten in to believing that they have neither the desire nor the capacity to be productive. Far too many descendants of slaves have bought in to being penitentiary patrons and welfare recipients because it is expected. Far too few of us know the truth about ourselves and that America owes virtually all of its wealth to Black’s who provided free labor and genius to American enterprise.

So the next time you’re dining out, wearing that Donna Karan or Armani suit, and the waiter brings you that baked potato or those sautéed onions, remember it was the brilliance of a brother named Henry Blair who sewed the seeds that made it all possible way back in 1834. And when the waiter brings your check, be grateful to almighty God that you can sign it with more than an X.

Ty Gray-EL, the Minister of Poetry, is an author, lecturer, playwright and human rights activist. He is the CSO of Gray-EL Edutainment Media Syndicate, a Cultural Enrichment Company dedicated to raising consciousness and self-esteem among African Americans www.breathofmyancestors.com   

Mr. President, Please Leave Syria Alone

I posted the following on FB yesterday

‘While we are playing Bejeweled, Angry Birds and anxiously awaiting the next episode of Scandal our country is planning to disobey the 6th Commandment and bomb Syria. Is there anyway we can collectively convince our President and his war-mongering advisers that we have no business in Syria and ask them to remember..."Thou Shall Not Kill"? 
Can we demand that we war no more? I mean when will our elected officials actually do the will of the people? What do we have to do?’

The following question was asked:

“I don’t understand the moral calculus that says its OK to stand by and watch a despot kill hundreds of people at a clip. What do you suggest Ty, as alternatives to ending the genocide in Syria.”

What do I suggest we do?

I suggest we mind our own business, that’s what I suggest. Who appointed America the world’s police in the first place? I suggest we remember Iraq and how nobody ever found a chemical play-set, much less chemical weapons. I suggest that we remember that every time we stick our noses in someone else’s affairs, millions of people die and billions of dollars just go up in smoke. They are still bombing in Iraq as the result of our so-called peace-keeping. Let’s see how much good we’ve actually done attempting to be the world’s protectors. Almost 60 thousand of our own died in Vietnam and we were complicit in 3.8 million of Vietnamese being murdered.

Let’s look at how helpful we have been in Iraq. Four thousand five hundred American soldiers killed; more than thirty thousand severely wounded and more than two-2 trillion dollars wasted. Over 650 thousand Iraqis killed and more than a million wounded because we want play police. Remember they said the same thing about Saddam Hussein as they are saying about Assad.  Thousands killed to date in Afghanistan, with the death toll climbing and thousands of the Afghan people dead because we have to HELP. Please; how are we helping with so many dying?  Please keep in mind and mark these words; Assad proclaims his innocence and that he did not do this to his own people, the same way Saddam proclaimed there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction.

What do I suggest? I suggest we turn our attention to the chemical warfare raging right here in our back yards. If we are talking about attacking injustice and fighting for human dignity then attack the murderers who are dropping the bomb of heroin on the inner-city streets of every major metropolis where there are large concentrations of our people. I suggest you demand our officials to spend the billions of dollars they propose to defend Syria on cleaning up our streets. Defend American citizens, the Syrians can take care of themselves. And history has shown they will be much better off without our “so-called assistance” And please don’t tell me that cleaning up our streets is something we have to do ourselves and pass the buck. You damn right we have to do it ourselves, by demanding that those we elect do our bidding.

What do I suggest? I suggest we launch investigations on how it is that chemicals only invade the neighborhoods where there are large concentrations of black and brown people. I suggest we leave Syrian people’s business to Syrian people and we attend to our own. I suggest we demand that someone explain how there are thousands of shootings in our hoods and no one has attacked that problem. I suggest that if you want to attack something, attack the out of control murder rates in every major city were we reside. I suggest we attack the chemical war-mongers who keep shipping crack, heroin, meth and opiate-laced marijuana onto our streets and that they use those resources to stop our children from being gunned down daily on the streets of Chicago. Stop the chemical warfare raging against us in Philadelphia, Little Rock, Detroit, South Central L.A.,  Oakland and a hundred other cities across America.

You talk about us standing around and watching a despot murder hundreds of people. I don’t understand your question when you stand around every week and watch a thousand gunned down in your own neighborhoods.

Let me end by saying that our ‘so-called OBLIGATION TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT’ has never quite panned out. We have become the world’s bullies. We are the most hypocritical nation on earth. We say we are about love, truth, peace, freedom and justice but we demonstrate hatred, lewdness, slander, murder, theft and everything that harms. America has become the world’s terrorist dropping drones on innocent people.  We are hypocritically the pot, calling the kettle black. We are supposed to be a Christian nation that abides by the laws handed down from God that direct us ‘not to murder’. The Sixth Commandment says, “THOU SHALL NOT KILL”.  Period! There are no caveats or exceptions to the rule. If we are to be Christ-Like then we have to stop making excuses for murder. It is a shame and a sin and it hurts my heart that we have become so callous. It hurts my heart that we can take someone’s life so easily.

Finally, what do I suggest? I suggest that reconsider the principle of ‘as you sew, so shall you reap’. I suggest we remember we are willfully taking human lives and I suggest we stop killing people now, because eventually they will start killing us.

~Ty Gray-EL is an author, poet and activist who escaped from a federal prison plantation through the back fence of Education more than 30 years ago. He escaped under threat of death for disclosing that education is the key to unlock all the gates in every facility on every plantation. He is the Chief Creative Officer of Gray-EL Edutainment Ministry Services, a Cultural Enrichment Ministry dedicated to raising levels of consciousness and self-esteem among African Americans. He lives with his wife on the outskirts of Washington DC. in Prince Georges County MD. He can be reached at www.breathofmyancestors.com