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▲ 227 r/BlackHistory+1 crossposts

Opal Lee, The Grandmother of Juneteenth, turns 100!

She was born a week after Naomi Whitehead's 16th Birthday.

u/Tensacchrine-1995 — 7 days ago
▲ 0 r/BlackHistory

Where black Americans better off in the past than their current position today ?

I have conversed with many older black men rather it be at church or rather it be around the neighborhood many arrive at the same consensus; life was far easier for the black family in America in the 60s than it is today. Many people have a hard time accepting this opinion most have been forced to believe that integration set us on a path destined for success. One of my elders have told me the struggles their parents faced when they were younger. Being young comes with a sense of naivety so experiences only become apparent and understood after the development of emotional maturity.

He talked about times going to the grocery store having to go to the back of the line every time a white person got behind them. As a kid one would be confused, but as you age you begin to understand your past experiences.

Integration was one thing I believe has lead us down the wrong path, but it is far from being the most detrimental act in our current shortcomings. I believe the weakened familial structure is what has lead us to the unsteady times we now live in. This weak familial structure has many governmental and social institutions to lay blame; "government assistance" forcing single mother households in order for the benefits now relied on to come in.

Me personally I would rather have my family with me and the world against me than what it is we have today. We live in a world where some of our own women are against us, while everyone else hides behind a facade pretending they really accept us.

Share your thoughts below.

reddit.com
u/Electronic_Plan1983 — 6 days ago
▲ 33 r/BlackHistory

A Shot Rang Out. M.L.K. Went Down. And a Reporter’s Instincts Kicked In.

u/nytimes — 7 days ago
▲ 34 r/BlackHistory

America’s War on Black Families

The slave trade separated married couples, with slaveowners exercising absolute control over their human property by deciding whether to allow or even force slaves to marry each other. Married slaves had no legal status, so their marriages lasted only until one partner was sold. After the Civil War, Whites resented the equality of legalizing marriages for Blacks, which threatened White control of Black labor.

A New Deal program created in 1935 to combat poverty was Aid to Dependent Children, which helped women who didn’t have breadwinning husbands. Unlike White women, Black women were expected to work and were denied these welfare payments. Despite Whites’ devaluation of Blacks and their marriages, the Black marriage rate was higher than the rate for Whites from 1890 to 1960. But that changed in the 1960s. As Blacks moved north in the Great Migration and civil rights activists defeated discrimination in welfare policy, it became easier for poor Black women to get welfare. White backlash against the civil rights movement eroded support for antipoverty programs and characterized Black female recipients as “welfare queens.” Labor market discrimination reduced Black men’s earnings, leaving Black women dependent on welfare benefits and subject to humiliating enforcement of the “man in the house” rule, which denied benefits if a man was living in the home. Consequently, many Black men abandoned their families to prevent the mother from losing benefits.

After the US Supreme Court struck down state “man in the house” rules in 1968, the government’s assault on Black marriages continued with President Nixon’s War on Drugs and the era of mass incarceration. By 2010, 4,347 of every 100,000 Black men were in prison, a rate six times higher than the White incarceration rate. In 1981, President Reagan signed a new federal law which treated a live-in partner’s income as if he were a stepfather, resurrecting the “man in the house” rule. Today, Black men experience the highest rates of mortality, unemployment, and incarceration, decimating the supply of Black men earning family-supporting wages, and causing the Black marriage rate to plummet. In 1960, 61% of African Americans were married; by 2020 it fell to just 30%.

Recommended reading: The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty by Jill Quadagno

America’s War on Black Families - Black History Snippets

u/BlackHistorySnippets — 7 days ago
▲ 77 r/BlackHistory

Happy Birthday, Fannie Lou Hamer

"Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom.

I'm not backing off."

Hamer of my favorite people in history, she didn’t take no shit.

u/Countryb0i2m — 9 days ago