Among Friends

[Teddixat]

@Foxxee    uggh

[Teddixat]

@Goldengate8361    I agree except for Clarence Thomas😖

[Goodie2shoes]

Great Post !  Barbara Jordan, Rosa Parks, Colin Powell, Stacey Adams, John Lewis just to name a few. I would never put Clarence Thomas among this group of Hero's

[spumoni99]

---

@Zernia Rose wrote:

@spumoni99 The series about Emmett Till,"Mothers of the Movement" was broadcast in January and aired over three weeks, two hours for each part.  It was powerful and evoked lots of emotions.  Some of the actions depicted are quite atrocious but hstorically accurate.  One could see many parallels to events today.  I met his mother, Mrs. Mamie Till Mobley.

---

Thank you for the information, I think I may have watched that I saw that something would be shown in January so I checked my cable.  I thought that their would be a major motion picture made of his story. 

Wow you met her, that is wonderful she was such a brave woman and it was so sad was she suffered she had a bad feeling about him going to the south and she was right.

[Oznell]

It's hard to narrow down.

Thomas Sowell.   The pinnacle for me, like @just bee--  a fearless intellect, one of the greatest public intellectuals of modern American life.  His books and ideas will last.

Also: 

Phillis Wheatley  early poet, prodigy and abolitionist

Shelby Steele   author, thinker

John McWhorter  (his specialty, linguistics, is what drew me to him, but he's versatile and fascinating even outside that field.)

Bob Woodson    activist, advocate of neighborhood empowerment

Jackie Robinson  athlete (but just as well known for his extraordinary character)

Isadore "Tuts" Washington    New Orleans blues pianist

Ella Fitzgerald    peerless jazz singer

Clarence Thomas   jurist and one brave guy

Walter Williams   economist

Langston Hughes  poet

Duke Ellington    composer, jazz performer

[just bee]

@Oznell 

Impressive list!

Some greats you have there.

[77yangya]

Dr. Hutchinson.

He saved my father's life by doing by pass surgery many years ago.

He lived another ten years because of this doctor.  Yes, he was black.

[77yangya]

Leslie Uggams, Ertha Kit, The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.

So, so many.  Diana Ross

I could fill volumes.

[gertrudecloset]

Vicente Guerrero: The first Afro-Mexican President of the Americas

Mexico’s black president abolished slavery before the U.S. Civil War

Vicente Guerrero, the first black president of Mexico, who was also a version of Abraham Lincoln for the nation. In 1829 President Guerrero issued a Mexico-specific decree to abolish slavery (which led to Texas slave owners removing Texas itself from Mexico a few years later).

In the Colony, in the states of Guerrero and Veracruz, there was miscegenation between black slaves and the native population of Mexico who were called “pardos” by the Spanish. They and the mulattoes were the results between the white boss and the black slave.

Both whites and blacks and indigenous people openly rejected the men and women who came from the mestizaje; therefore Afromestizos were not recognized either as indigenous or as Africans, much less as whites.

Vicente Guerrero was born in the small town of Tixla in the Mexican state of Guerrero. His parents were Pedro Guerrero, an Afro-Mexican, and Guadalupe Saldaña, an Indian. Vicente had very humble beginnings. As a young man he worked on what came out for him and he did it as a mule muleteer in his own father’s mule races. This work took him on a journey that marked his life and ideologies. Guerrero worked throughout Mexico and began to listen to the voices of the people and their collective ideas of independence. On one of the trips, he met the famous rebel General José María Morelos y Pavón. In November 1810, Guerrero decided to believe in the general idea of ​​the revolution and joined Morelos. Unfortunately, Morelos was assassinated by the Spanish, and Guerrero became Commander in Chief.

Iturbide agreed to an alliance with the independence movement and supported Guerrero in a series of national measures known as “The Iguala plan.” This plan, however, gave civil rights to the Indians but not to the Afro-Mexicans. Guerrero refused to sign the plan unless Afro-Mexicans and mulattos were also given equal rights. Clause 12 was then incorporated into the plan. It said the following: “All the inhabitants. . . regardless of their European, African or Indian origin, they are citizens. . . with full freedom to exercise their means of subsistence according to their merits and virtues ”.

Later, Guerrero was part of a “Junta” of three people who ruled the then independent Mexico of 1823-24. Guerrero, head of the “People’s Party,” ordered public schools, property title reforms, and many other liberal programs. Guerrero was elected the second president of Mexico in 1829. As president, Guerrero went on to defend the cause not only of the racially oppressed but also of the economically oppressed.

President Guerrero formally abolished slavery on September 16, 1829. Shortly after, betrayed by a group of reactionaries who removed him from his home, President Guerrero was captured and eventually executed, like Lincoln. Guerrero’s political platform was based on the belief that civil rights are for everyone, including Afro-Mexicans. Mexicans with a heart full of pride call him the “greatest colored man.” 

However, the concept of miscegenation was forced to change after Independence and during the Reformation. It was after Independence that it began to be said that Mexicans were mestizos (children of Spanish and indigenous people) and thus, little by little, the enormous number of Afro-Mexicans were disappearing from the national discourse. Today, many people do not recognize the existence of Afro-Mexicans, much less know the contributions they have made to our country.

Many of the heroes of independence were Afromestizos, among them the first African-American president of Mexico: Vicente Guerrero.

Vicente Guerrero marked the social, military, and political sphere of the first half of the 19th century.

Vicente Guerrero participated in the War of Independence using the Guerrilla War which is also characterized by resistance.

Guerrero received a coup d’etat from the conservatives, he left the country, and in 1831 in Acapulco, they betrayed him to be sent to shoot by orders of the centralist Bustamante.

His contemporaries did not always recognize the role of the general due to his humble background. In written representations, Guerrero was admired and respected by some, as well as despised and insulted by others, due to his intellectual abilities and racial origin. In the visual representations that we have of Guerrero, it is clarified despite having been Afro-Mexican.

[gertrudecloset]

Mansa Musa

Mansa Musa (Musa I of Mali) was the ruler of the kingdom of Mali from 1312 C.E. to 1337 C.E. During his reign, Mali was one of the richest kingdoms of Africa, and Mansa Musa was among the richest individuals in the world. The ancient kingdom of Mali spread across parts of modern-day Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso. Mansa Musa developed cities like Timbuktu and Gao into important cultural centers. He also brought architects from the Middle East and across Africa to design new buildings for his cities. Mansa Musa turned the kingdom of Mali into a sophisticated center of learning in the Islamic world. 

Mansa Musa came to power in 1312 C.E., after the previous king, Abu Bakr II, disappeared at sea. Mansa Abu Bakr II had departed on a large fleet of ships to explore the Atlantic Ocean, and never returned. Mansa Musa inherited a kingdom that was already wealthy, but his work in expanding trade made Mali the wealthiest kingdom in Africa. His riches came from mining significant salt and gold deposits in the Mali kingdom. Elephant ivory was another major source of wealth.

When Mansa Musa went on a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca in 1324 C.E., his journey through Egypt caused quite a stir. The kingdom of Mali was relatively unknown outside of West Africa until this event. Arab writers from the time said that he travelled with an entourage of tens of thousands of people and dozens of camels, each carrying 136 kilograms (300 pounds) of gold. While in Cairo, Mansa Musa met with the Sultan of Egypt, and his caravan spent and gave away so much gold that the overall value of gold decreased in Egypt for the next 12 years. Stories of his fabulous wealth even reached Europe. The Catalan Atlas, created in 1375 C.E. by Spanish cartographers, shows West Africa dominated by a depiction of Mansa Musa sitting on a throne, holding a nugget of gold in one hand and a golden staff in the other. After the publication of this atlas, Mansa Musa became cemented in the global imagination as a figure of stupendous wealth.

After his return from Mecca, Mansa Musa began to revitalize cities in his kingdom. He built mosques and large public buildings in cities like Gao and, most famously, Timbuktu. Timbuktu became a major Islamic university center during the 14th century due to Mansa Musa’s developments. Mansa Musa brought architects and scholars from across the Islamic world into his kingdom, and the reputation of the Mali kingdom grew. The kingdom of Mali reached its greatest extent around the same time, a bustling, wealthy kingdom thanks to Mansa Musa’s expansion and administration.

Mansa Musa died in 1337 and was succeeded by his sons. His skillful administration left his empire well-off at the time of his death, but eventually, the empire fell apart. Well after his death, Mansa Musa remained engrained in the imagination of the world as a symbol of fabulous wealth. However, his riches are only one part of his legacy, and he is also remembered for his Islamic faith, promotion of scholarship, and patronage of culture in Mali.