Filling in the Gaps in American History (FIGAH), Inc.

Cherokee Freedmen Moses and Mary Johnson had this undated photo taken of themselves with their children some time before Mary died and before Moses enrolled their youngest children as Cherokee Nation citizens in 1901. They lived in present-day Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.

Learn more about the experiences of Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants in the exhibit “We Are Cherokee: Cherokee Freedmen and the Right to Citizenship,” on display through July 8 at the Cherokee National History Museum in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. For more information, go to: bit.ly/CherokeeFreedmenExhibit

Image courtesy of Debra HorseChief.

'Mission accomplished:' home of Nova Scotia's first Black doctor gets heritage designation Halifax regional council votes unanimously to grant status to former home of Dr. Clement Ligoure on North Street.

October 16, 1968: Tommie Smith and John Carlos give the Black power salute during the national anthem.

The was an act of protest by the U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City.

As they turned to face their flags and hear the American national anthem (The Star-Spangled Banner), they each raised a Black-gloved fist and kept them raised until the anthem had finished. Smith, Carlos and Australian silver medalist Peter Norman all wore human rights badges on their jackets.

The event is regarded as one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympic Games.

Both athletes were kicked off the US team for their protest.

Lou Brock steals base 104 and 105 to set the single season record on September 10, 1974. As part of the celebration second base is presented to Brock by Hall of Famer Cool Papa Bell.

Birmingham Black Barons with 17 year old Willie Mays in the center celebrate winning the 1948 Negro League World Series

August 20, 1948 - The largest crowd (78,382) ever to attend a night game sees Satchel Paige become the fourth consecutive Indian to throw a shutout. The ageless wonder joins Gene Bearden, Sam Zoldak and Bob Lemon in blanking the opposition.

The Dahomey Amazon Warriors were the most famous African warrior women of the 1890s. The only female frontline troops in contemporary conflict history. A sub-Saharan band of female terminators who left their European colonizers trembling.

The Pittsburgh Crawfords, including Cool Papa Bell (seventh from right), Josh Gibson (fourth from right), and Satchel Paige (second from right), 1935.

On this day in 1862, congress allowed the enlistment of African Americans into the U.S. military. Those who served and loved the country that did not love them back.

Military History of African Americans. A THREAD

Black Americans participated in every American war from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican–American War, the Civil War, the Spanish–American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.

Thousands of black troops, made up of both free men and enslaved, fought in the continental war. They were promised freedom for fighting but those promises were often broken.

Although black people fought in the war , state legislatures and the Continental Congress forbade the enlistment of free black or enslaved people.
white Americans opposed admitting them to the army for fear of armed uprisings.

In November of 1775, George Washington
issued an order to bar black soldiers from the
Continental Army.

Later on Jan 1776, alarmed by the impact of the British Dunmore proclamation, that would give freedom to enslaved black people who would fight on their side, Gen. George Washington authorizes the enlistment of free Blacks.

In the War of 1812, black soldiers signed up on both sides, the British Vice Admiral offered freedom to any enslaved black man willing to join its British Corps of Colonial Marines. Many of the black men served in the Navy.

In the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, Black Battalion fought in the battle after General Andrew Jackson called for "Free Colored Inhabitants" to join a segregated black regiment and receive the same bounty as white soldiers.

In 1861 when the Civil War began, nearly 200,000 black men served as Union soldiers during the war. The Emancipation Prociamation, issued on January 1, 1863, officially sanctioned the enlistment of black soldiers into the Union Army.

The United States Colored Troops (USCT) was formed in 1863 after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. Almost all of the Black troops were led by white officers. In the fall of 1865, several months after the Civil War ended, the USCT was disbanded.

After the Civil War, the Army formed segregated regiments of black soldiers, most of them formerly enslaved, called The Buffalo Soldiers.

Through the century these regiments, including the 24th, served in the American West, fighting Indians, protecting roads and railroads & guarding mail.

Why were Black soldiers called “Buffalo Soldiers”?

Native American tribes who fought against the soldiers referred to the black cavalry troops as "buffalo soldiers" because of their dark, curly hair, which resembled a buffalo's coat & because of their fierce nature of fighting.

During the Spanish American war, The men of the Buffalo Soldiers were the only blacks that fought in Cuba. Many Black soldiers left the military because they didn’t want to contribute to the suppression of freedom of other minority.

In World War 1, despite racial discrimination in the military, more than 200,000 black men served
in France. Most troops served in service units
rather than in combat.

the most successful black regiment, the 369th Infantry Regiment, The Harlem Hellfighters.

Though they spent more time in battle than any other regiment and were one of the most decorated, they never got the recognition they deserved.

They fought so hard & with such tenacity that they were dubbed "The Harlem Hellfighters" by the German troops they faced.

It became the first American unit to be cited with the French Croix de Guerre. One medal of honor & many Distinguished Service Crosses

After World War 2 black soldiers were given passes to go and seek for employment in whites owned companies. It accelerated the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the
industrial North.

By 1945, more black troops were being
assigned combat roles. All-black combat units
were established, the 758th Tank Battalion, the 332nd Fighter Group (Tuskegee Airmen), and the 477th Bombardment Group, known popularly as the Tuskegee Airmen.

Black soldiers share their racism experience in Vietnam in the 1970s.
https://twitter.com/africanarchives/status/1302815017839079424/video/1

𝗣𝗔𝗨𝗟 𝗝𝗘𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦 (1799–1874)

When James Madison became President in 1809, ten-year-old Jennings was chosen to be a footman in the president’s mansion, which would later be known as the White House. In 1814 during the burning of Washington, as British troops were approaching the White House, Jennings at the age of fifteen, along with two other men, helped save the noted Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington known as the Lansdowne portrait. In his memoir, he wrote that he, a French cook, and one other person took down the painting.

After President Madison ended his second term in office, the Madisons and Jennings returned to Montpelier in 1817. Jennings, who was now eighteen years, married F***y, a slave held on another plantation. The couple had five children. Jennings was with James Madison when he died in 1836. In 1837 former First Lady Dolly Madison took Jennings with her when she returned to Washington, D.C to live in the winter seasons. This separation forced Jennings to leave his family behind, although he occasionally visited them.

In 1841 Dolly Madison wrote in her will that Jennings would be the only one of the family slaves freed upon her death. In 1844, however, Madison sold Montpelier and all of its property including its slaves, except Jennings, to support herself. That same year, Jennings’s wife, F***y, died in Virginia. In 1845 Madison hired out Jennings to the new president, James Polk, keeping the earnings made while he worked again at the White House.

In 1846 Madison sold Jennings to Pollard Webb, an insurance agent, for $200. Six months later, Webb sold him to Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster for $120. Webster immediately freed Jennings. In 1848 Jennings helped plan the unsuccessful escape of 77 slaves from Washington, D.C. in what would be known as the Pearl Incident. The following year, Jennings married Desdemona Brooks, a free mulatto from Alexandria, Virginia.

In the 1850s, Jennings was able to reconnect with his children, John, Franklin, and William and his daughter, Mary. The sons would later join the Union Army in the American Civil War. After the war, Jennings worked at the newly established Pension Bureau part of the Department of the Interior to handle claims of veterans and soldiers’ families. While there, he met John Brooks Russell who persuaded Jennings to publish his memoir, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison in 1865.

Jennings bought a lot and house at 1804 L Street NW, and his son John lived with him. His daughter Mary lived next door with her two children. His sons Franklin and William also lived in the area. After Desdemona’s death, Jennings married a third time in 1870 to Amelia Dorsey. Paul Jennings died in Washington, D.C. in 1874 at the age of seventy-five.

#𝗕𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 #𝗕𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆𝗢𝘂𝗿𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆

Lucy Higgs Nichols (April 10, 1838 – January 25, 1915) was born into slavery in Tennessee, but during the Civil War she managed to escape and found her way to 23rd Indiana Infantry Regiment which was encamped nearby. She stayed with the regiment and worked as a nurse throughout the war.

After the war, she moved north with the regiment and settled in Indiana, where she found work with some of the veterans of the 23rd.

She applied for a pension after Congress passed the Army Nurses Pension Act of 1892 which allowed Civil War nurses to draw pensions for their service. The War Department had no record of her, so her pension was denied. Fifty-five surviving veterans of the 23rd petitioned Congress for the pension they felt she had rightfully earned, and it was granted.

This photograph shows Nichols and other veterans of the Indiana regiment at a reunion in 1898. Beloved by the troops who referred to her as “Aunt Lucy,” Nichols was the only woman to receive an honorary induction into the Grand Army of the Republic, and she was buried in an unmarked grave in New Albany with military honors in 1915.

LEGACY

▪In 2011, a marker in her honor was erected by the Indiana Historical Bureau and the Friends of Division Street School. As listed on Indiana Historical Bureau markers, Lucy Higgs Nichols' marker is located at 38°17.283′N 85°48.763′W, on E. Market St., in New Albany, Indiana. A summary of her life and accomplishments appears on the front and back of the marker.

▪The Carnegie Center for Art & History in New Albany, Indiana, houses an exhibit, Remembered: the Life of Lucy Higgs Nichols, Men & Women of the Underground Railroad.

▪The Frazier History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, reprises the life of Lucy Higgs Nichols each year, through programs and a local theatrical interpretation.

▪An historical novel based on the life of Lucy Higgs Nichols, Honorable (Purpose in Repose) and a companion book for younger readers, by Indiana author Kathryn Grant, were published in 2013.