WAGGING ONE'S OWN TAIL
As a general rule, it seems that most formidable black influences have been, and are being, omitted from history, as recorded by most whites and most blacks in America.
James Armistead, a Virginia slave and an American colonial double-agent, for example, is not named, to my knowledge, in standard texts as having been the decisive factor in colonies' winning the American Revolution. Armistead had tricked British General, Charles Cornwallis, into surrendering the remaining starving British forces, 8,000 men, to the Americans after the Siege of Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781, based on Armistead's deliberately false information had trapped them inside of the peninsula surrounded.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Armistead_Lafayette
Another example is that of York, the 'servent' of Clark of the "Lewis and Clark Expedition," 1804-06. York is rarely mentioned as the decisive figure in the success of the exploration of the Louisiana Territory, after its purchase from France. The Indians, whom they encountered, all called him "Big Medicine" due to his size, speed, dark hue, woolly hair, hunting skills. They thought York was the leader of the expedition, due to his bison-like resemblance. They gave him a number of wives in his honor and in respect. They also granted safe passage through their land to the small troupe of land surveyors , who were also naturalist explorers. The actual white leaders found it to be expedient to keep quiet and to remain in the background, while noting this favorable treatment of York as very salubrious indeed for the Missouri River-based journey.
In my own case, my work as the main student at Webster Groves High School in Missouri who was critical, to the establishment of the Students for Black Awareness and Action in 1968, (unto the present), and its seminal work in instilling biracial unity or black racial pride, I am not in its Webster Hall of Fame.
The same thing is true of my work in Butler, Missouri. There the Amen Society, that I established in Court, while serving as the Pastor of the Brooks Chapel AME Church, did great work! This Amen Society of Bates County, I had also led and directed, while practicing law, in Kansas City. Amen Society built and dedicated a bronze statue of an idealized black soldier on the town square, in October 2008. The State of Missouri, later in 2012, built a natural, 40-acre state park.
Both statue and park memorialized the historical "Battle of Island Mound," of October 1862, when the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry soundly defeated a twice-larger armed force of mounted Confederate irregulars, that were then based on Hog Island in the Ozark River. They were the first black troops to fight (and win!) in the Civil War, two months before the "Emancipation Proclamation" was issued by President Abraham Lincoln, which did not liberate any slaves in Missouri at all! The black troops in "First Kansas," liberated themselves, by escaping from and taking up arms to defeat slavery.
My point is that, to my knowledge, the Bates County Museum does not, even as yet, mention my name in regard to this great historical legacy and labor of love, left to it by the black people of Brooks Chapel AME Church and others, who had no knowledge, whatsoever, of the ultimate sacrifices paid by black heroes only eight miles westward, until I brought it to their attention in a sermon one Sunday morning with a vow to pay long-overdue homage to our own valorous dead soldiers!
The reader may excuse my own self-indulgence in mentioning my own achievements, with those of James Armistead (Lafayette) and York. But, as my late father, Elvis Mitchell Coleman, has often said : "It's a mighty poor dog that won't wag his own tail!" I am wagging!
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
WAGGING ONE'S OWN TAIL
WAGGING ONE'S OWN TAIL
As a general rule, it seems that most formidable black influences have been, and are being, omitted from history, as recorded by most whites and most blacks in America.
James Armistead, a Virginia slave and an American colonial double-agent, for example, is not named, to my knowledge, in standard texts as having been the decisive factor in colonies' winning the American Revolution. Armistead had tricked British General, Charles Cornwallis, into surrendering the remaining starving British forces, 8,000 men, to the Americans after the Siege of Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781, based on Armistead's deliberately false information had trapped them inside of the peninsula surrounded.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Armistead_Lafayette
Another example is that of York, the 'servent' of Clark of the "Lewis and Clark Expedition," 1804-06. York is rarely mentioned as the decisive figure in the success of the exploration of the Louisiana Territory, after its purchase from France. The Indians, whom they encountered, all called him "Big Medicine" due to his size, speed, dark hue, woolly hair, hunting skills. They thought York was the leader of the expedition, due to his bison-like resemblance. They gave him a number of wives in his honor and in respect. They also granted safe passage through their land to the small troupe of land surveyors , who were also naturalist explorers. The actual white leaders found it to be expedient to keep quiet and to remain in the background, while noting this favorable treatment of York as very salubrious indeed for the Missouri River-based journey.
In my own case, my work as the main student at Webster Groves High School in Missouri who was critical, to the establishment of the Students for Black Awareness and Action in 1968, (unto the present), and its seminal work in instilling biracial unity or black racial pride, I am not in its Webster Hall of Fame.
The same thing is true of my work in Butler, Missouri. There the Amen Society, that I established in Court, while serving as the Pastor of the Brooks Chapel AME Church, did great work! This Amen Society of Bates County, I had also led and directed, while practicing law, in Kansas City. Amen Society built and dedicated a bronze statue of an idealized black soldier on the town square, in October 2008. The State of Missouri, later in 2012, built a natural, 40-acre state park.
Both statue and park memorialized the historical "Battle of Island Mound," of October 1862, when the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry soundly defeated a twice-larger armed force of mounted Confederate irregulars, that were then based on Hog Island in the Ozark River. They were the first black troops to fight (and win!) in the Civil War, two months before the "Emancipation Proclamation" was issued by President Abraham Lincoln, which did not liberate any slaves in Missouri at all! The black troops in "First Kansas," liberated themselves, by escaping from and taking up arms to defeat slavery.
My point is that, to my knowledge, the Bates County Museum does not, even as yet, mention my name in regard to this great historical legacy and labor of love, left to it by the black people of Brooks Chapel AME Church and others, who had no knowledge, whatsoever, of the ultimate sacrifices paid by black heroes only eight miles westward, until I brought it to their attention in a sermon one Sunday morning with a vow to pay long-overdue homage to our own valorous dead soldiers!
The reader may excuse my own self-indulgence in mentioning my own achievements, with those of James Armistead (Lafayette) and York. But, as my late father, Elvis Mitchell Coleman, has often said : "It's a mighty poor dog that won't wag his own tail!" I am wagging!