Benjamin Banneker: End Slavery Now!

Hello everyone. I'm your host Jermaine Fowler and welcome to The Humanity Archive podcast. In this episode, I have a story from history that is very rarely told, at least not in the way that I'm going to tell it. It's the story of Benjamin Banneker and there's a shocker to this story because Benjamin Banneker was a free Black man living in 18th century America and you don't hear about many free Black people during the 18th century because there weren't that many free Black people in America in the 18th century. And this is important to our story because American slavery was in full force.

Now Banneker was born on November 9th, 1731 and he was born free. Yet even though he was born free, even though he learned to read and write, even though he owned land and even though he was exceptionally intelligent in math and in science, he could not escape the dishonoring, the devaluing, and the dehumanizing of Black people in America. And he had a fascinating life! Boy, let me tell you! But even though he had this fascinating life, I rediscovered him through a letter and it was a letter that he wrote to Thomas Jefferson.

Yes, thee Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State at the time that Banneker wrote to him, future president. And the crux and the core of this story is going to be about how Benjamin Banneker wrote a letter making a case for Jefferson to help end slavery. And again, this is very important because perhaps this letter was the first time a Black man boldly claimed his right to free speech, directly challenged a high ranking white government official and did so with a swaggering confidence. This sort of thing was unheard of in the 18th century. Banneker was the root of a tree which would spring forth many branches. One of the forefathers of this long line of Black people with such a love of freedom and a hatred for slavery that they were willing to risk their own fragile freedom for the liberation of other Black people.

Who would come after him? Well, the Phillis Wheatley's, the William Still's, the Henry Bib's, the Frederick Douglass's. This is the lineage and line of free Black people either born free or who gain their freedom, who would stand up to fight for black liberation. Him and others like him would attempt to negotiate the release of millions of slaves. Showing that diplomatic pressure can be a forceful weapon. You don't always have to have a gun. And unfortunately though, for Banneker, that pressure would have to be applied for over 100 more years. And before we get started I just wanted to let you ponder this quote by James Baldwin, he says, "the paradox of education is precisely this, that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."

Benjamin Banneker was conscious and this is how he applied that consciousness through this letter to Thomas Jefferson. And in this episode we're going to explore that. We're going to pick that apart. We're going to examine that in all its implications in early American society and how that played out and how that ties into today. So stick with me. We're going to have a fascinating story, but as always in sticking with the theme of these last several podcasts, we're going to see how someone questioned injustice. I'm Jermaine Fowler once again and we are about to go into this next Humanity Archive podcast entitled Benjamin Banneker: End Slavery Now. Let's get into it!

Benjamin Banneker was born in 1731, a free Black man in a slave society in Baltimore County, Maryland. He grew up in the rapidly changing times. Seeing America transformed from a British colony into a rebellious militia during the Revolutionary War and then finally into its own democratic nation. As a farmer, an amateur astronomer, a mathematician, an author, Banneker was an accomplished citizen under any circumstances but even more so as a Black man, when navigating the human bondage and extreme racism of the 18th century in America.

Now Banneker learned many of his skills through a relationship with a Quaker family named the Ellicotts with whom he became a land surveyor. And I think it's important to note that the Quakers were some of the first white anti-slavery groups in America, far from the buttoned up image of the guy on the oatmeal box that you see. We're not talking about Quaker oats here. I think in the Black community there is sometimes this idea that Black people had a monopoly on resistance to slavery and oppression. We talk a lot about the vicious legacies of white supremacy and slavery and rightfully so, but there were also many white people who made themselves a part of that struggle.

So there were those like John Woolman who spearheaded the early rebuke of slavery. By the end of the 18th century, slave holding had ceased among Quakers, a very long time before it would end for anyone else. So this is the type of connection Banneker had. We've got to look at his connections because by associating with the Quakers and their religious rebelliousness, this could have lifted up the spirit of rebellion within him and tying into his resistance to slavery and this whole freedom movement. So when a lot of people think of Benjamin Banneker, they may know him because of the story of him assisting with the layout of the nation's capital in Washington, D. C.

And I was troubled to find out that with no real evidence the legend has it that Benjamin Banneker single handedly laid out and developed the plans for Washington D. C. himself with no help. And this is the popular narrative in a lot of circles and even in the mainstream media. The Washington Post published the story citing this as fact and this is part of his mythology and it's probably untrue. But it made me wonder, why do people embellish history? Why would someone take a man like Banneker with the real moral and professional greatness and then exaggerate a story with things uncertain.

Why do we embellish historical figures in general? Maybe in this case there is something to prove. Black people have latched on to great figures to prove competence and to prove value. Maybe it really was thought to be the truth. Mark Twain once said, "never let the truth get in the way of a good story." So who knows, but let me digress from here, because for all of Banneker's real accomplishments, our story is about Banneker as a challenger. A man who had the audacity to write a public letter of courteous condemnation to the powerfully influential Thomas Jefferson. When the letter was written in 1791, Jefferson was not yet president but Secretary of State.

Still highly powerful and highly influential as the leader of foreign policy. So he had already written the Declaration of Independence at this point, with the famous lines, "we hold these truths to be self-evident. All men are created equal." These words are already penned when this letter was going to get written by Banneker. And maybe Banneker noticed that these words directly contradicted the deeply entrenched roots of slavery and racism in American society. And Banneker was determined to have a word about it. Now Thomas Jefferson is placed on an almost saint-like status as one of the golden founding fathers of America.

Like a mob boss, he has been historically untouchable. Like he can get away with whatever he wants and you can't say anything about Jefferson because he basically formed this democracy that allows us to live the lives that we live in America. So leave him alone. But we're not gonna do that in this episode. We get to go ahead and turn over some leaves, turn over some stones, and ruffle some feathers because Thomas Jefferson wasn't that great of a guy in a lot of regards. But let's hear a little bit of praise for him just so we can kind of see what we're dealing with and the kind of pedestal that they put him on. This is some praise and this comes in 1994 by David McCullough.

He's got a lot of famous books out. He's a bestseller on history in literature. McCullough says this, "all honor to Jefferson in our own world now in 1994. We can never know enough about him. Indeed we may judge our own performance and how seriously and with what effect we take his teachings to heart. When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was speaking to the world then, but speaking to us also across time. The ideas are transcendent. As is so much else that is bedrock to what we believe as a people, what we stand for, so many principles that have their origins here with the mind and spirit of Jefferson."

There are countless, countless other quotes lauding and praising and and applauding Thomas Jefferson because of his role in founding our American democracy. But I did find an opposite view that I wanted to share. One that paints Jefferson as a monster. And this is by historian Paul Finkelman. He says this about Thomas Jefferson, "the third president was a creepy, brutal hypocrite. Jefferson was always deeply committed to slavery and even more deeply hostile to the welfare of Blacks, slave or free.

His pro slavery views were shaped not only by money and status, but also his deeply racist views which he tried to justify through pseudo-science. When he wrote the Declaration of Independence announcing the self-evident truth that all men were created equal, he owned some 175 slaves. He sometimes punished slaves by selling them away from their families. And while he wrote a friend that he sold slaves only as punishment or to unite families, he sold at least 85 humans in a 10 year period to raise cash to buy wine, art, and other luxury goods." So it's important to balance these two views of Thomas Jefferson, to see these two sides of Thomas Jefferson, to flip the coin back and forth, heads or tails, which Thomas Jefferson do you believe in?

Most people flip heads, just like the nickel showing the head of Thomas Jefferson, but for all Jefferson's noble ideas of liberty and universal rights, Banneker must have been scratching his head in confusion about all the unequal treatment and the conditions of Black people who at this point really weren't considered Americans. They weren't even considered people. Now did Jefferson mean all white men were created equal? How could the same man who wrote this own so many slaves, sell so many slaves? Then get this, Jefferson watches one of his own enslaved people grow up from an infant and then he starts sexually abusing her.

Sorry if I trigger anyone with that but we always have to be real about the history that we're dealing with. It's not always pretty. She was only 14 years old and her name was Sally Hemings. He was 44 years old and I was shocked to read about slaves so vulnerable to every type of abuse imaginable. As I was researching, I read so many articles calling Sally Hemings and Jefferson saying it was a master and slave dynamic. A lot of articles on a lot of blogs and in a lot of videos, people were calling this a relationship. As if to say this was some consensual relationship between two equal human beings who chose to be together.

And I thought, wow! This is crazy! Like this was not a relationship. No slave and master dynamic could ever be a relationship. For one, Hemings is naïve, she's vulnerable, she's a kid. She's got to be scared. So I'll make my point again clear, there were no relationships between masters and slaves, only abuse and forced concubinage. Love and relationships are based on equality. You cannot have a relationship when one person has all the power and he even had children with her and he kept them all enslaved too. Looking at himself through the eyes of his children one wonders how Jefferson was able to sleep at night.

This is the Jefferson we don't hear about. And when I read about him, I often wonder how could this bright and brilliant man have such a pitch black character. Brilliance and ethics and morals don't always coincide now do they? So now let's get into Banneker's letter. Now I did want to just kind of paint a picture, a different picture of Jefferson and just imagine that Banneker is writing a letter to this Jefferson, this slave owner, the slave holder, the slave seller. And he wrote this letter in 1791 and Banneker, essentially, he's asking Jefferson to treat Black people equally and live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

Now the correspondence starts with the utmost courtesy and then it quickly firms in tone with an unflinching backbone, Banneker openly questions America's slavery policy. So he starts off with this kind respect. He acknowledges Jefferson in this high standing place as Secretary of State. And then it takes a sharp turn, exposing the prejudice and discrimination. And I just want to give a disclaimer because writing was way different back in the 18th century. So long sentences and they didn't really use commas a lot. So if you see me gasping for breath as I read this, then you know why. But I'm going to read little snippets of Banneker's quote. I'll give my commentary and we're going to go through this.

So Banneker first says, "I am fully sensible of the greatness of that freedom which I take with you on the present occasion. A liberty which seemed to me scarcely allowable when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in which you stand and the almost general prejudice and prepossession which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion. I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world. That we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt. And that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human and scarcely capable of mental endowments."

So I'll stop there real quick and just kind of talk about how Banneker addresses how Black people are fighting false assumptions. This is when people have presupposed thoughts, prevailing ideas about Black people, pseudoscience. There were scientists during this time who measured skulls for instance of Black people and said their skulls were smaller, therefore they did not have the mental capacity of white people. This is what Banneker is speaking to. Or people who would say Black people haven't accomplished anything. They can't be smart. They can't be human, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you had these lines of thinking that were very prevalent in America.

And this is what Banneker is speaking to. How many times do you assess someone negatively based on what they look like? How many of us have had our humanity ignored because of an association with a particular group? Maybe it's Black or Mexican or a woman or poor and white, a Muslim, the list goes on and on. America at that time had false assumptions of Black inferiority and this had to be regularly visible to Banneker and he writes:

"sir, I hope I may safely admit in consequence of that report which hadth reach me, that you are a man far less inflexible in sentiments of this nature than many others, that you are measurably friendly and well disposed toward us. And that you are willing and ready to lend your aid and assistance to our relief from those many distresses and numerous calamities to which we are reduced. Now sir, if this is founded in truth, I apprehend you will readily embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevails with the respect to us and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are that one universal father hath given being to all of us. And that he hath not only made us of one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same faculties and that however variable we may be in society or religion, however, diversified in situation or color, we are all of the same family and stand in the same in relation to him."

Now the word human brotherhood or human sisterhood really struck me when I read this section because I think it's an old idea that we see so much disconnection, even now on race and separation fueled by gender. And I wonder if it's a utopian idea to even think that we can all coexist under this universal brotherhood and sisterhood idea, or could we move closer to it even. But I also wonder if Banneker had read some of Jefferson's quotes or words because it doesn't seem like a secret that Jefferson has this reputation for not really liking slavery. At least publicly he says that he doesn't really know what to do with it.

So he wastes no time and he essentially tells Jefferson, if you truly believe in your sacred ideas of liberty, if what they say about you is true, you'll fight for the emancipation of Black people. Anything short of this is gross hypocrisy. This is a question then not of Jefferson's brilliance as a statesman, or a visionary, or a writer, or a leader but a question of his integrity. Banneker is raising the question, he's bearing witness and he's saying are you going to be honest? Are you going to be uncompromising in your commitment to truth, to moral principle, to the ethical values of which you speak? And he says, "sir, I have long been convinced that if your love for yourselves and for those inestimable laws, which preserve you the rights of human nature was founded on sincerity, you could not be solicitous that every individual of whatsoever rank or distinction might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof.

Neither could you rest satisfied short of the most active diffusions of your exertions, in order to their promotion from any state of degradation to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them." All of that to say, you couldn't be satisfied by how Black people were being treated and then being in a slavery condition if you believe what you say you believe. Now Banneker does something smart next. He's going to use the historical memory to draw a parallel between the state of bondage of American revolutionaries to the British crown, because the Revolutionary War was early Americans saying that they were in a state of slavery so to speak, under the heel of the crown of Britain.

And they started this revolutionary war to free themselves. So Banneker is going to try to tie this in with slavery in saying that can't you relate to us? You were just in a similar position and this is a logical appeal that he tries to make. And he says, "sir, suffer me to recall to your mind that time in which the arms and tyranny of the British crown were exerted with every powerful effort in order to reduce you to a state of servitude. Look back, I interest you, on the variety of dangers to which you were exposed. Reflect on that time in which every human aid appeared unavailable and in which even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict and you cannot be but led to a serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential preservation.

You cannot but acknowledge that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received and that it is the peculiar blessing of heaven. It is now, sir, that your accordance thereof wasn't so excited." And then we go on a little deeper into the letter and Banneker is going to boldly scold Jefferson. Further outline his hypocrisy. Again he calls for empathy and he's calling for Jefferson to feel as we feel, see as we see, imagine what it's like again. So this is an appeal to Black suffering, to Black experience, not some surface experience like going to a restaurant and saying the food is good. No, he's talking about not some cheap amusement park experience, but this is a deep experience that Banneker is trying to connect to.

When he's trying to persuade Jefferson, he's trying to touch his soul. Banneker's pen bleeds with the life and death urgency of what it means to be a Black person in America under such catastrophe of slavery or near slavery. And this may be his most persuasive passage yet. He says, "here sir was a time in which your tender feelings for yourselves had engaged you thus to declare you were then impressed with proper ideas of the great valuation of liberty and the free possession of those blessings to which you were entitled by nature.

But sir, how pittable is it to reflect that although you are so fully convinced of the benevolence of the father of mankind and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges, which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the same time, counteract his mercies and detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren and under groaning captivity and cruel oppression that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act which you professedly detested in others with respect to yourselves. Sir, I suppose that your knowledge of the situation of my brethren is too extensive to need recital here.

Neither shall I presume to prescribe methods by which they may be relieved, otherwise than by recommending to you and all others to wean yourselves from these narrow prejudices, which you have imbibed with respect to them. And as Job proposed to his friends, put your souls in their souls stead, thus your hearts be enlarged with kindness and benevolence toward them. And thus, shall you need neither the direction of myself or others in what manner to proceed herein." Wow! I told you the pen was bleeding in that passage. Banneker poured his heart out in that passage.

Trying to persuade, trying to implore, trying to convince Jefferson to have a heart, to release his slaves. Fight with his power and prestige and influence to end this institution, in the forming Congress of the United States. This was Banneker's plea. Banneker recognized the deep divisions between the Declaration of Independence and the horrible enslavement of Black people in America and he had the courage to write about it. He wrote with all the sincerity and hope that Jefferson would actually do something about the problem. That he could connect with Jefferson through logic or through showing this massive amount of suffering to Jefferson or connecting with some empathy, some humanity with Jefferson in this letter.

You can feel his heartbeat through his words. An impassioned plea that Jefferson would use his powers for the greater good of humankind but Jefferson would do no such thing. Such a disappointment. His response to Banneker was short. It was dismissive. And essentially he says that Black people would have to prove they are equal in society before he will give them the fair shake as free human beings. It wreaks of racism. With the profound sense of entitlement he says he wants nothing more but Black people must prove their equality. Here's Thomas Jefferson when he says in his response, "sir, I thank you sincerely for your letter of the 19th and for the Almanac it contained.

Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit. That nature has given to our Black brethren talents equal to those of other colors of men and that they appear in civil want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and America. I can add with truth that nobody wishes more ardently to see a good system commence for raising the condition, both of their body and mind to what it ought to be. As fast as the imbecility of their present existence and other circumstances which can not be neglected will admit."

Moment of silence. Moment of silence. I mean Thomas Jefferson hears this impassioned plea, this appeal to logic, all this reasoning and he says Black people literally have to prove that they can be members of society. That they aren't brutes. That they are human. That they have mental strength, mental capacity to make it in this form of democracy that they created. Members only. And those members are all white men. What could have been different had Jefferson actually listened to this letter?

Felt this letter? Done something about this letter? And fought and used his power and influence to end the institution of slavery back in the early 18th century? My heart pours out right now thinking about such a missed opportunity, such a missed chance and all of the people who had to suffer because of this neglect by Jefferson. They didn't listen to Benjamin Banneker. Wow! How history could have been different. How our American democracy could have been different. How our lives and my ancestors and your ancestors lives could have been different.

But they wouldn't be. They would have to suffer longer. Sad, sad story you all. I'm going to leave it on that note. Sorry to leave it on a sad note but that is the story. Jefferson would not listen. And you know the rest. Slavery would go on for another hundred plus years and then another a hundred plus years of fighting against Jim Crow and civil rights and so on and so forth. And here we are now with mass incarceration and all the things that are still playing out, affecting Black people, people of color to this day that are extensions of slavery. But there is always hope.

There's always hope for a brighter day. And as long as we can continue to nurture this democracy and have these dialogues and these critical conversations and I can put out shows like this and we can have forums and places where people can go to talk and just kind of put out their thoughts and ideas to be examined, to be taken apart and then put back together as a better us, as a better humanity, as better Americans, where we can come closer together. That is the hope. And we're going to leave that on a hopeful note today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and listening to The Humanity Archive podcast. I'm your gracious host again, Jermaine Fowler and if you want to know how you can support me, here's how.

You can go over to iTunes right now, if you're not listening there, subscribe to the podcast and then leave a review. If you liked this Benjamin Banneker episode, tell me you liked it and tell me what you liked about it. That feedback is crucial to my improvement of the podcast and to my general feedback that I get from you. Secondly, I want you to go over to Patreon and this is where you can support my work. And this is a donation-based platform where you can pay as little as $5 a month all the way up to $100 a month, if you're that generous, to support my work and the hours of research that I put in. The social media postings. These critical questions that I'm putting out.

And for my Patreon community, I also have a social syllabus. I have curriculum for teachers, for the regular population. I have reading lists. I'm putting out exclusive content and videos on there, but even aside from that, these podcasts take awhile. So this is what I love to do. Tell you these stories. So I want to continue doing that. So please support me so that I can. Next time we're going to be continuing this discussion where we talk about questioning injustice. So I want to keep that going. So tune in next time. Can't wait to engage with you again. We're going to leave you with the outro. This is The Humanity Archive podcast.

Martin Luther King Assassination Riots

I've often been intrigued by what we might term to be defining moments. It's those moments in our lives where there is a clear and marked change. It is those moments where things take a sharp turn for better or for worse. It is a moment that changes absolutely everything after it happens. It could be graduating or deciding to drop out of school. Don't take that option. But I'm just saying that would be a defining moment. It could be the birth of a child. It could be the tragic death of a loved one.

It could be a marriage. It could be moving away across the world or across the nation. All of these things that fundamentally shift the direction of your life. But what about those moments that fundamentally shift the direction of a whole nation? Maybe it's the dropping of an atomic bomb or a Great Depression or a world war or a bloody revolution. Or maybe it's the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is these defining moments in history that culminate into some type of collective response usually falling into the category of either collaborative mourning or a communal outrage or maybe a little bit of both.

So today we are going to talk about how one catastrophic moment in history, the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the riots that gripped the nation can serve as a case study for riots, protests and civil unrest. Now I probably don't have to give you the whole backstory but you know that America has existed as a racial hierarchy with Black people on the very bottom of the ladder since our great nation has been founded. So much progress has been made since those brutal days of Black enslavement, but Black people were still suffering indignities to their humanity on all fronts when Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in 1929. So he took the torch of Black freedom and carried that light onward as a great act of this orator and reformer through the 1950's and 60's. He took the torch from those like Phyllis Wheatley, from those like Frederick Douglass, from those like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and those other Black freedom fighters who came before him. There's plenty of information on his life but tragically I'm going to be talking about his death. So we get to Wednesday, April 3rd in 1968. It's 11:00 a.m. and there is a 39 year old King and he arrives at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis from his home in Atlanta.

Five years earlier, in 1963, he had given what some believe is the greatest speech of all time. His electrifying "I Have A Dream" speech had rocketed him into the role of the spiritual and political leader of Black America. The yearnings, the hopes, and the dreams of millions of Black people struggling for equality lay square on his shoulders. So Dr. King checked into the motel and settled into his $13-a-night twin bedroom. And he was sharing this room with activist Ralph Abernathy.

Room number 306 on the first floor overlooking the courtyard. King had decided that he was not going to stay in some chic hotel. He was a Nobel Peace prize winner and all the accoutrements and the money that came along with that. He was someone who had gained national attention but we're told that King wanted to get back to his roots. He wanted to get back down on the ground with the people. So he decided to stay at a motel. He was there in Memphis to strike with the sanitation workers for economic equality.

That night he was due to speak at a nearby church. It is here at the pulpit of the Mason Temple Church that he would preach the last sermon he would ever preach. We're told that some shutters banged in the wind and it made King visibly nervous. Ever since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 he has felt unprotected, unguarded, and undefended. If the President of the United States was vulnerable enough to be murdered, and this was a man being guarded by the highly skilled and vigilant secret service agents, then King must have been thinking he wouldn't stand a chance with the national acclaim and disdain that he was facing from much of white America.

Death threats, his house had been bombed, he'd been stabbed before. This is a man who had already had attempts on his life. King was hated and feared in his own time, even though he is loved today. The only dream some racists had was the one where King was dead. So King was at the Temple preaching. He had been speaking energetically for 40 minutes without notes. His voice crescendoed and reverberated around the room. I'll make a very feeble attempt to quote one of King's speeches. But I highly suggest you go listen to it yourself because I could not do it justice.

But King says, "I have seen the promised land! I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I am happy tonight! I am not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!" And the congregation roars its approval. It's very ominous too because within this speech he kind of predicts his own death and talks about his own death and he would die just hours later. So then on April 4th, the next day at 5:59 p.m., he walked out of his motel room.

He pulled down both lapels of his black silk jacket. He leaned over the balcony and he sees his friend Reverend Jesse Jackson is wearing a brown turtleneck and he says, "Jesse! We're on our way to Reverend Kyle's home for dinner and you don't have a tie on!" And he says, "Dr., the prerequisite for eating is an appetite, not a tie." So this is a congregation amongst friends. Ralph Abernathy is standing in front of a mirror putting on some Aramis aftershave and suddenly he hears what sounds like a firecracker. It was the shot of a rifle. A Remington Peters. Soft point, metal-jacketed bullet enters the right side of Dr. King's face just below his mouth fracturing his jaw and then exiting his face and hitting his neck. The bullet severed numerous arteries and fractured his spine in several places, coming to rest in the left side of his back. King falls backwards. His hands shooting up as if to hold his head. Dr. King is lying there in a pool of blood, his feet against the balcony rail, his knees raised, his right hand outstretched, his left flung behind him. The bullet had cut his brown tie in two, just below the knot, and blood was pumping from the wound.

Ralph Abernathy kneels by his mentor and his friend. We're told that he thinks he sees fear in Kings' eyes. "Martin," he said, "this is Ralph. Don't be afraid. It's going to be alright." Dr. King tries to say something. His eyes are glaring and King is rushed to the hospital at 7:05 p.m. and he is pronounced dead. The King was dead. At the White House in Washington, D.C., President Lyndon B. Johnson is told that King has died. Immediately he cancels a trip to Hawaii for peace talks on Vietnam, a war King was highly critical of.

And Johnson can hear the scream of sirens from fire engines just a few blocks away from the White House. Riots have broken out in the Capitol. It was 7:25 p.m., only 20 minutes after King's death. When something's fast, then we might not say that it travels at the speed of light. We might say that it travels at the speed of a riot because that's how quickly the information spread and people started rioting after King's death. And it is through the lens of the King Riots that I want to explore riots and unrest.

Not as some mindless crowd response or act of collective thuggery as it's so often portrayed by the dominant perspective. But I want to explore them as a phenomenon of those people in history who have come together consciously and collectively as they have all perceived some form of wrong or injustice. So this is a story of unlawfulness and unrest! This is a story of outrage! This is a story of upheaval and uprising! This is a story of disorder! This is a story of justice and injustice! This is a story of riots as told through the King Riots of 1968.

This is The Humanity Archive podcast. Let's get into it! Welcome to The Humanity Archive podcast. I am your gracious host, Jermaine Fowler and today I have a fascinating story from history that you've probably never heard before. But even if you have, you've never heard it in the way that I'm going to tell it. Today I'm going to talk about the King Assassination Riots of 1968. What spurred me to do this podcast is because I am living in one of those defining moments in history that I spoke about in the introduction. No doubt in my mind that 2020 will go down in a similar way as did 1968, the year that King was assassinated.

It is a year where the world has a revolutionary energy. This was also a year of riots and civil disobedience. And there's this saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." So make no mistake about it. I don't condone riots. It's wrong to burn down other people's homes and businesses, to steal, to loot, and terrorize. And let's be honest, riots are dangerous, scary, and destructive. But at the same time America and many, many, many other civilizations on earth were founded on riots. Citizens have always resisted power by using fists where their voices didn't draw a response.

In the Moral Economy of the Crowd, English historian E. P. Thompson, theorizes that riots aren't just some mindless collective action. He says, "It is possible to detect in almost every crowd action some legitimizing notion. By legitimizing notion I mean that the men and women in the crowd were informed by the belief that they were defending traditional rights or customs and in general that they were supported by the wider consensus of the community. On occasion this popular consensus was endorsed by some measure of license afforded by the authorities. More commonly the consensus was so strong that it overrode motives of fear or deference."

Motives so strong that they override fear. We can take a look at 1765, where crowd consensus was so strong it overrode fear. This was in response to the Stamp Act in which American colonists protested and those protests turned into riots. A contemporary at the time said, "a lawless rabble dismantled most of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson's Georgian mansion in a matter of hours. With axes they labored over it until dawn. Hutchinson's papers and valuables, bedding, and tableware afterward littered the streets. The house was a mere shell.

Not a book remained. Such ruins were never seen in America". And that was the complaint of the Lieutenant Governor himself after American colonists had rioted and destroyed his property, destroyed his home. He didn't even appear until the next day when he had to appear in borrowed clothes because he had to run away half-naked apparently to get away from it all. The American colonists were fighting to have a say so in how they were taxed. So there again is that legitimizing factor that overrode modes of fear and deference, which Thompson was talking about, an element of riots.

Riots usually spring up from a grievance and then become a form of protest or an attempt to raise awareness about an issue. Or some riots may just be outpours of frustration from the deprived, oppressed, and dispossessed. It often pits those who want radical change versus those who want to keep things how they are. In America we see riots go from this kind of universally common idea or sort of push back by people being oppressed or lacking or aggrieved in some way. So starting in earlier history and throughout most of history you have what is called 'Bread Riots' in Europe and elsewhere, where you have near-famines maybe from drought or war, and you can't eat so you riot and loot so you can eat.

An empty stomach overcomes fear real quick doesn't it? These same Bread Riots happened in America in the confederate south in 1863 when white men and women violently invaded stores, destroyed them, and they stole, and they ate. They were hungry. There was drought in these forging civil war armies who were eating all the civilian food stores and prices of food skyrocketed but the incomes of the Southerners did not. So what did they do? They rioted. So we can clearly see there is a continuum of riots throughout history. They are universal. No society has been without them. Riots are as human as a heartbeat.

But then you go from the Bread Riot to the Race Riot. And that's when the perception changed. That's when we see the riot as something of the other. As if they are a Black thing and not a human thing. So that same energy in 1968 of racial tension and 400 years of anti-Black violence sparked grief and rage. And again this happened in 2020. In the same year that I'm in now. That is the legacy that we're still dealing with. What we're talking about is throughout history riots have been a response to people being excluded in some way. Excluded from access to wages to satisfy their need to eat.

Excluded from democratic rights, excluded from justice. In 2020, we still have the issues of dilapidated housing, decrepit school systems, mass incarceration, massive unemployment, and underemployment, inadequate healthcare, and its violations of rights and liberties. All of these things disproportionately affect the Black community, followed closely by the Brown and Red communities. What do you have left to do in this situation but die a social death or fight? Riots can almost be seen like a collective fight or flight response. Now we're about to get into the King Riots but I want to pivot to my own time.

Still, again in 2020, people are very weary from the coronavirus pandemic, fearful of the deaths. Some are furious at the lockdown orders and tens of millions of people were out of work. A pandemic that has hit African-Americans harder than whites in the U. S., and the killings of Black people by police have escalated into a cold, hot mixture of protests and riots. Now if you're like me, you've noticed something about these riots. Many times those causing the destruction are not even people who have the grievances or who are doing the protest. Agent provocateurs are a known fact in the history of protest. An agent provocateur is French for inciting agent.

These have been people who commit or who act to entice other people, or groups of people, to commit illegal or rash acts, or falsely implicate them. And what the goal is, is to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the group. So you might think I'm going down a rabbit hole here, but this is no conspiracy theory. And I just want to have a nuanced conversation because instigators have been a huge factor in the history of riots. If you study and dig into any riots, I guarantee you'll find an instigator somewhere. Sheriffs and police have been heavily involved in riots where whites have destroyed Black communities in history.

They've also instigated to de-legitimize legitimate causes and social movements that go against the status quo. In the publication, The Intercept, its journalists lay it out like this, "the best documented use of provocateurs by the U. S. government occurred during the Federal Bureau of Investigations counter-intelligence program, or COINTELPRO, from 1956 to 1971." One notorious example in May 1970, an informant working for both the Tuscaloosa police and the F.B.I. Burned down a building at the University of Alabama during the protest over the recent Kent State University shootings.

The police then declared the demonstrators were engaging in an unlawful assembly and arrested 150 of them. How governments handle riots isn't always by the book but this is the perspective of riots you don't hear about on the news. Now let's keep the nuance in this conversation and add this, lest you think riots are some recent problem. Just remember that riots have been going on the whole of the recorded human history. In 44 BC they rioted after Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome. Matter of fact they rioted all the time in Rome. Burning down Senate houses, no Molotov cocktails at that point but regular old fire did the job.

Anti-Jewish riots occurred in Europe in the 14th century. Jewish people have been oppressed and subject to despicable, inhuman treatment for a long time. But those in Europe thought that the Jewish people caused the black death. Some say the only constant is change. You can say the only constant in history is riots. So then only the perception of whether the riots are justified changes. So then we turn now to 1968, when all of these anti-democratic forces of voter suppression, and segregation, and mass incarceration, and police militarization, impoverization, miseducation, all of these catastrophes coalesced on the Black community.

And then you get the national devastation in the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. This is what I've been setting up. Now to understand why these riots were the result of a moral uproar, you have to understand the love that the Black community had for Martin Luther King. I say Black community, not as everyone, because you have some Black nationalists who thought King was soft. They didn't like him but he was overwhelmingly viewed as a prince of peace. He was overwhelmingly viewed as courageous even if people didn't agree with him. Then on the other side you had some white people who loved King. But a majority, during his own time, thought he was an agitator or a rabble-rouser.

He was definitely agitating them. They didn't like him. A lot of them would have rather seen him dead. He was not very popular at the time. We're told that some white soldiers even celebrated King's death. One John Bracket recalled, "overt joy expressed by some of my white colleagues that this troublemaker had been eliminated." Overt hatred and callousness was how FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover viewed King when he said, "King was the biggest liar and communist in this country." Then California Governor Ronald Reagan said King's killing was a great tragedy but, he added, "tragedy began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they break."

There are clear undertones that had King stay in his place. Had he not inadvertently incited these riots, he might still be alive. But the love was there. And that love would be seen at his death. There were groans of despair throughout the nation. A lightning strike of agony shot through the hearts of so many Americans. Some stopped in their tracks on the streets or at their jobs and they broke down in tears. As a whole the African-American community was gripped by grief and rage. Some prepared for a race war. I read other stories of many Black people who contemplated suicide.

Prolific writer, James Baldwin, sums up the love so well when he describes the scene at King's funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta, Georgia, where about 50,000 people came together in mourning. Baldwin says,"the atmosphere was black. With attention indescribable as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. I did not want to weep for Martin. Tears seem futile. His death was too terrible. The void too deep. I may also have been afraid and I could not have been the only one.

That if I began to weep, I would not be able to stop." So you see I think the volcanic anger that erupted from the Black community after King's death was really based in this profound sadness and sense of injustice of being hurt. So I'm about to tell the story of these 1968 riots and I think you'll see some parallels to our own time. And I'll just ask you flat out, are riots a necessary evil? I think their value depends on who you ask. Those white people who burned down Blackwall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921.

They alleged Black people of criminality. They would have said they were needed to protect order and stability. Those Black folks on the other side of the riots, they would not have thought so. When people riot from hunger, they would say ask my stomach, yes my right is justified. But that person who is clutching to the bread, they would probably say not so much. It is all a matter of perspective, right? If you're someone who is benefiting from the status quo and you're the person with the bread and not the person without it, then you are going to condemn the bread riot. If you're someone who benefits from the racial hierarchy from white privilege and sits a top the caste-like social structure in America, then no, race riots are not a necessary evil.

If you're the shop owner who's building and livelihood was razed to the ground often by people in your own community, no riots are not a necessary evil. Yet those who are aggrieved in the long-term, history sometimes favor the collectively oppressed if what they were rioting over was tyranny or hunger. So when we look back at these riots, how will history look at them. Political activist Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense gave birth to the Declaration of Independence, America's founding document, what did he think about riots? That man who so influenced the founding fathers. What did he have to say when he was talking about the oppressed, working-class white man in Europe and America in the face of the tyrannical monarchy of the late 18th century.

He said, "if we look back to the riots and tumults which at various times have happened, we shall find that they did not proceed from the want of a government, but that government was itself the generating cause. Instead of consolidating society, it divided it. It deprived it of its natural cohesion and in gender discontents and disorders which otherwise would not have existed. Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government that injures the felicity by what society is to be preserved."

So when we look back at riots in history, it doesn't seem like the great majority of people have a problem with riots as an idea for fulfilling the promise of democratic freedom. Sometimes riots have been overlooked when white people murdered Black people or ran them out of town. They were justified because maybe a Black man looked at a white woman a second too long, or maybe she looked back or maybe they alleged there were too many criminals in the community. We don't look at all white people as criminal because of those. But it is this criminalization of the Black community that is at the core of the disdain for the riots that still happen to this day. So I ask the critical question.

Is the problem with the riots or with who was doing the rioting? Because if rioting is to be condemned it should be condemned no matter who is doing it. If there are instances where it is justified, then those justifiable instances should apply across the board regardless of race, or class, or gender, or sexuality, or any other such factor. And that way we are upholding a moral consistency. Now back to 1968, this is America in the shadow of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and here's a newspaper description of what went on during that time. It says, "President Johnson ordered 4,000 regular army and national guard troops into the nation's Capitol tonight to try to end riotous looting, burglarizing and burning by roving bands of Negro youths.

The arson and looting began yesterday after the murder of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis." In Washington more than 900 businesses were damaged. Many store owners rushed to put pictures of King up in the storefront windows. And one must wonder, as one does today, was this an act of true solidarity or an act of fear in hope that their shops would not be destroyed? Maybe the Black youth that the newspaper article was talking about saw these white grocery stores as a manifestation of injustice. Many may or may not have known or felt that, or maybe they weren't political at all. But across America there were outbreaks and broken store windows and firebombing in hundreds of cities; Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington.

12,000 national guardsmen deployed here, 8,000 there. There were even snipers who targeted firemen attempting to put out the flames. In contrast, in New York, the aftermath was mild in comparison. People came out by the thousands and there was a tense peace and mourning and some property destruction but no guards had to be called out. For years historians and sociologists have been trying to study why in some cities there were riots and in some there weren't. So this makes me wonder again about the term riot and it's slippery because when does it go from a peaceful protest to a riot? When one garbage can is lit on fire? How many bottles have to be thrown at the police?

Does a riot start with the smashing of one store window or 20? Does it matter if the peaceful protestors aren't involved at all in the rioting? Or do people see non-violent and violent forms of Black insurrection on tv all as one big blur? And I wonder, because I read that the demographics of riots skew heavily to the youth. It's mostly young people who are the ones doing the rioting in any riot. I wonder how many of these riots aren't political at all in nature, and it's just an outgrowth of the political, into something where you just have kids who think they're just having fun.

The ones who cut school with some rebellious energy and they have this mentality, let's just go out and cut loose and have a little bit of teenage anarchy. Let's smash some windows. You also have to wonder because the guards and the police were ordered not to shoot and I wonder how many would have shot one of those kids if they could? Most of the people killed in riots, though, weren't from bullets, but they were burned up trapped inside of buildings. All of this to say there is a thin line between what one might call unrest, peaceful protest, and mayhem. It's also important to wonder, given that King was the equivalent of importance to the president of Black people in 1968 how might have white America reacted if a Black man had killed and assassinated the President, Lyndon B. Johnson? Looting and arson might be the least.

Those racist lynch mobs might well be resurrected. In a New York Times article dated April 6th, they report on the rioting in Chicago. It says,"A 28 block strip of Madison Street on the Negro west side bore the brunt of the anger that tore up Chicago yesterday. Today West Madison Street, a long finger of small shops, many topped by scar brick tenements, was occupied by national guardsmen. The guardsmen, the fatigue of long tense hours of duty showed in their eyes, were grouped at every corner bayonets at the ready. Blue-helmeted policemen prowled relentlessly along the debris strewn sidewalks. The flames that reddened the sky last night and into the early morning had been tamed for the most part, but weary firemen continued to pour water onto the smoldering buildings along the 28-block stretch.

Wispy, gray smoke lingered over most of the area. Negro residents were being kept off Madison, at least off the street. Some sat behind smudge windows in the tenements watching the fire hoses spray water on the buildings next door. But the side streets were choked off with traffic as hundreds of Negroes drove slowly along the edges of the devastated area. Cars had their headlights on in memory of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. whose assassination in Memphis apparently touched off the rioting there." There was one quote I read from someone who was there and it said, "I was just really surprised to see the hate on the faces. Young, beautiful Black boy faces."

A white person said, "the anger from King's assassination was like nothing I've ever seen." And they say this as if to say that after all those years of uncivility toward Black people by white people, that Black people were still expected to act civilized in every situation. After the Black community pumped out love warrior after love warrior non-violently for 200 years, who tried to write, speak, escape, vote, plead, beg, debate, argue, and assert their right to freedom in a civilized way. It's as if after all of this Black people lose all humanity, and are looked at as the plague of society when a riot breaks out.

As if riots haven't broken out across all races, civilizations and places in history. Rutgers professor Brittany Cooper writes about white reaction to Black anger when she said, "The mere fact that Blacks are protesting affects how white society sees those protests. Black anger, black rage, black distress over injustice is seen as one, unreasonable and out-sized, and two, as the thing that must be neutralized and contained quickly." Cooper says this often takes the form of whites, "preaching at Black people about how they're bad and how they're ungrateful for being angry." It's an interesting way to look at it. And again I'm talking about the racialization of riots as if they're not a human thing.

And no they are an other thing, a black thing, a thing to be placed upon the Black community as if it is something that white people throughout the history of America have been able to use to deny that there is humanity within the Black community and only criminality. And then there was Randall Harris who was actually there in Baltimore when the riots broke out. Remember, there's hundreds of cities where these broke out and a lot of these people are still alive today. So they're able to tell their stories now, looking back into the past. And he said, "someone was going to account for King's death. King was our voice. He was the poor voice for the nation. He was taken away and what are you going to do?

And he was the best of us. So we don't know what else to do except act out of the frustration of the enormous loss." And says Harris, he wasn't proud of his role in the looting and destruction razed on Baltimore's retail corridor. And then he says, "it didn't bring the kind of outcome we thought it would." The article goes on to say their show of rage, rioters thought then would bring attention to the plight of their community. So there it is. A different perspective on riots. Whether you agree or disagree with the method, the anger is there and it has to be dealt with regardless if there's destruction or rioting or not.

We see that riots have always been a weapon of the oppressed and the working class or people who have been aggrieved and think that their aggrievance is justified to go off and cause some destruction somewhere, many times starting as a protest. So it's almost as if a protest is a plea and a riot is more like a scream. We see that sometimes protests are infiltrated and that's what really starts the riots, outside instigators. Sometimes rioters beat and kill innocent people. They destroy whole businesses. More often, police and the military kill rioters.

Sometimes there's kids involved and they're the ones causing some of the destruction. Sometimes the police beat and maim the rioters in the name of law and order. And sometimes those doing the rioting have beat store owners. But more than sometimes at the bottom of riots is a lot of angry, very working-class, disillusioned, young men and women taking part in events that escalated out of conditions that for them they deemed as catastrophic like the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. The pendulum swings from the rational to the irrational, from the peaceful to the violent. But the foundation is the real human unhappiness.

I did not produce this podcast to talk about riots as a good or a bad, but to tell you that you have to look at each individual riot throughout history and judge it on its own merits. Also remember the underlying fact that riots are violent. And when there is violence there are victims. And the grand irony of the 1968 riots is that there may have been no other person in history as passionate about non-violence as Martin Luther King, Jr. but there it is from The Humanity Archive. No either/or perspectives here. It's about complexity.

It's about subtlety. That's how we look at history and there would be no better way to end this show other than with the words of King himself when he says, "I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with a problem from a direct action point of view. I am absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand here before you tonight and condemn riots.

It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without at the same time condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say that tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last 12 or 15 years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that the large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Now every year about this time our newspapers and televisions and people generally start talking about the long hot summer ahead. And what always bothers me is that the long hot summer has always been preceded by a long cold winter. And the great problem is that the nation has not used its winters creatively enough to develop the program, to develop the kind of massive acts of concern that will bring about a solution to the problem. And so we must still face the fact that our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption.

The question now is whether America is prepared to do something massively, affirmatively and forthrightly about the great problem we face in the area of race, and the problem which can bring the curtain of doom down on American civilization if it is not solved." Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into The Humanity Archive podcast. I am your gracious host, Jermaine Fowler, and this podcast was brought to you by my very own Patreon. If you go to www.patreon.com/thehumanityarchive what are you going to find there?

You're going to find study guides. You're going to find extra podcast episodes. You're going to find newsletters that I put out just telling you my thoughts on history tying it to the present. Always with the search for truth. Always trying to tie in my stories with a integrity and morality and consistency. I tell these stories with so much passion and trying to tell the stories of everybody for everybody. This is the history of humanity. I hope you join me next time where I'm going to round out this theme of riots and policing and the history of it all.

I thank you so much for lending me your ear, for joining me here. Support the show. I'll continue to put these podcasts out for free. I'll continue to be writing articles for my website for free, but this is a way that you can tangibly support the show and allow me to continue doing what I do, what I feel like that I do best and what I'm most passionate about. So until next time I am your gracious host, Jermaine Fowler.

Beyond 1492: The Real History of Native America

It's going to be very difficult for you to wrap your mind around what I'm about to tell you. At least, it was for me. When Europeans colonized the Americas, they killed so many Indigenous people that the climate changed. Now, remember that after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, it is estimated that 90% of the Indigenous populations were killed by systemic violence and disease. And so a group of researchers from University College London started to study this rapid population decline and realized that huge swaths of farmland and vegetation were abandoned.

As a result, plants and flora regrew on such a massive scale and removed so much carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that the planet's average temperature dropped around negative 0.15 degrees Celsius between the 16th and 19th centuries. Forget cars and trucks and planes and burning fossil fuels changing the environment. It is plausible that people were changing the planet long before that from killing.

So when we think about the depth and breadth and scale of the Indigenous Holocaust, understand that the impact was literally felt across the globe. Now we are going to cover a lot of ground quickly in this short episode. So strap on your seatbelts, but I just wanted to start with the impact of Native genocide, because that is a term that is still highly debated in highbrow academic circles. But, what else do you call it? There was the targeted killing of Indigenous ethnic groups and systemic violence on a mass scale. There was an intent to destroy as we can see, journalists and writers, and government officials in American history echoing public sentiment.

Take the words of Thomas Jefferson and 1813, when he said “This unfortunate race, who we had been taking so much pains to save and civilized have by their unexpected desertion. And peroneus, barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.”

Sounds like an intent to exterminate. Since the word exterminate was used by a high ranking U.S. official. We can also look to the words of California governor Peter Burnett in 1851, who said, “the world extermination will continue to be weighed between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.”

Or another one I came across said “These Indians will in the end be exterminated. They must soon be crushed. They will be exterminated before the onward, march of the white man.” So when we talk about manifest destiny, this is what we're talking about. You can read the words. Of what they were clearing the land for. Who it was being cleared for? And what that clearing entailed. The extermination of Indigenous peoples. Now history books are still in a state of denial about this and they uplift and sanctify Christopher Columbus as he discovered, quote-unquote, the Americas. A lot of people don't like him. A few of his statues were toppled in the 2020 protests sparked over the racial injustice and police killing of George Floyd.

But he still holds a sacred place in the national narrative. We hear how he stepped onto the fertile soil of Hispaniola and planted the flag for the Spanish Royal crown. But. It wasn't a newly found land the Taino and Arawak we're already there. They called the land Ayiti. The land of high mountains. Now many books still trivialize the lives of those people already in America, the white Western narrative remains the dominant narrative. And yes, we hear about significant figures like Sitting Bull and Sacagewea, but where is the real conversation about the larger indigenous contributions to modern America?

Those are some of the things we're going to talk about today. Everyone, welcome to another episode of The Humanity Archive Podcast. I am your gracious host, Jermaine Fowler. And today I have a story from history that you may have never heard before, but even if you have. You’ve never heard it in the way that I'm going to tell it. Today, I'm going to talk about the real history of native America. Now let's get in to it…

There is a problem with our history in America. Textbooks don't go deep enough. The marginalized are erased from the national narrative, the raw truths of our collective past overlooked. Honest history books are still being banned. Historical myth is taught over historical reality, and that is where The Humanity Archive comes in. Here we tell the stories of the historically unheard. And I know what it's like to feel frustrated about the lack of diversity in history. In public education. So here we search through the archives to find truth in the human experience.We look at the history behind the headlines to understand how the past affects the present. And by being here, you are continuing your journey as a lifelong learner, exploring the experiences of humanity to enrich your life and transform the world. 

Now, before I get going, this episode is sponsored by my first online history course, Beyond 1492, The Real History of Native America.

This podcast is inspired by the course, the course dives much, much deeper than this podcast episode. So you won't want to miss it. 

In the course I survey and electrifying chorus of native writers and scholars and leaders in an urgent and powerful lecture on the history of native peoples.

What are you going to understand when you’ve finished this? The history of genocide and white supremacy and race as it applies to the Indigenous experience in America. Number two, you're going to understand Indigenous resistance movements from colonization up through the present. Here is what I need you to do right now. Pause this episode, and go to www.thehumanityarchive.com. Click on the course tab and sign up for beyond 1492.

So again, that's www.thehumanityarchive.com. Just click on the courses tab and sign up for beyond 1492.

Now we're going to go to the year 1958; the Ku Klux Klan started passing out flyers to organize a gathering at Hayes pond in North Carolina.

This community was mostly populated by Native Americans of the Lumbee Nation who had recently gained recognition. And remember, this wasn't long after the 1954 brown vs. board decision to desegregate public schools. So the Klan was angry, and they decided to put their hoods on and burn some crosses and cause some terror, you know.

They wanted to, “remind Indians of their place in the racial order.” The rally was organized by a man named James W. Catfish Cole. And he'd called for 5,000 Klansmen to descend on the town. But recruitment must not have been going quite that well during that year, 1958, because only about 50 to 100 people showed up to the rally.

And this is where the Klan underestimated the people they were trying to terrorize. You see the Lumbee Nation at the time had about 55,000 members. One of the largest Indigenous nations in the U S at the time. And these are a people who had been fighting and fighting and fighting for years already for official recognition.

So they weren't in any kind of mood to be terrorized. And the Lumbee showed up to the Klan rally 500 members strong, and they were armed with pistols and rifles.In the heat of the night, the Lumbee surrounded, the makeshift platform, the Klan was speaking on and there was  pushing and shoving and in all the confusion and excitement one of the Lumbee shot out the only floodlight and everything went dark.

Outnumbered and terrorized the Klan fled. More shots rang out. Some of the Klansmen even left their wives behind. Others tried to get away so quickly in their cars they drove into ditches and had to be pulled out later. In the end, no one was killed and there were only a few minor injuries, but the Klan never tried to bother the Lumbee again.

“We had to do what we had to do. If we hadn't done it, they will have soon been in our front yard,” said one of the Lumbee Nation members, Lee Ancil Maynor. This is just one of so many stories that have been cast aside, but that show how Native Americans were also fighting battles of resistance against racism and oppression during the Civil Rights Movement. 

The Battle of Hayes Pond is a more modern story of Native resistance when so many Native histories end around 1900. And so that is why, in my course, Beyond 1492, I make it a point to include stories like this. And stories of pre-Columbian North America. But even when we think about America after 1492, I think about how there have been some huge misconceptions. People tend to have this idea that in 1500s, 1600s and 1700s there were just these continuous and consistent tribes and Indigenous states.

But let's talk about language for a minute. And as I was thinking about this episode, I thought about the use of the word tribe. So I try to be careful with it, but so many people died on such a massive scale that by the time we get to the 1500s and 1600s, a lot of times we were looking at groups who'd recently banded together because their whole worlds had been obliterated.

Now, back to the word tribe. That's one of those words used by the colonizers as the opposite of advancement. So still, to this day, that word is just thrown around. And it's thrown around whether we're talking about a group of 20 people, where it might apply. Or whether there is a group of 10,000 people. So a word like community or chiefdom or nation would definitely be more appropriate in a lot of the instances where tribes used.

Here's another fact, most people don't know about native American history. Who do you think was the first person recorded to have crossed the full breadth of north America? Most people are going to say, Lewis and Clark. And their expedition in 1803. No, that would be wrong. 100 years before Lewis and Clark, a Yazoo Indian made the same transcontinental journey. Starting from Mississippi, Moncacht-Apé traveled as far as Southeast Alaska.

Maps based on his journey paved the way for Lewis and Clark is a matter of fact, they carried a book with them, titled the history of Louisiana, which chronicled Moncacht-Apé’s journey. But our kids don't hear about Apé in school. They learn about Lewis and Clark, and that is how Native American accomplishments are whitewashed.

You know, as I'm recording this during National American Indian Heritage Month, I wonder why hasn't a month that began all the way back in 1990 done more to correct the record? Why hasn't it opened the door wide for these untold stories? Sadly, we have been denied a popular understanding of America's Native heritage. We are in great need of new perspectives and insights. Ones that conveys Indigenous stories and humanity in exquisite and convincing ways.

A true acknowledgment that American history began. With indigenous peoples long before Columbus ever caught wind in his sails. And that is what I've tried to do here with a few stories that I have told today, the perspectives that I've offered. And that is why I put together my course Beyond 1492, The real history of Native America. And on your own, I hope that I have enticed you to read and search and find out more about how we got to the Standing Rock protests. More about how Native people have the highest poverty rate in the U.S. What is the history behind these headlines? How did we get here?

That is it for this mini-episode, everyone, I or to just wanted to share a few stories, but in my next podcast, we'll definitely take a deeper dive and be back to a full episode. But remember, I need your support for my very first online history course to make it a success. So go to www.thehumanityarchive.com Click on courses.

Join up for Beyond 1492, and the bonus, and the workbook that you're going to get when you sign up. There's also a lot of free workbooks on my website. One where I give a list of native American history books that you can read, that one's free. I just want to thank everybody for listening. Thank you for being here and I'll be back with another full episode soon. See you next time.

The Black Death

Hello everyone. This is Jermaine Fowler. Your host of The Humanity Archive podcast. And for those of you who don't know me, I'll give you a quick tip about myself. I am what you might call a logophile, simply meaning a lover of words. I mean, it's pretty deep. I used to read the dictionary as a kid for fun. So when I take a word like pandemic and break that into its roots, starting with pan, Greek for everyone. And then I take the second part of that word, demic stems again from Greek demos, meaning people.

So when I put those words together then that means all people. And when we normally refer to pandemics, what are we talking about? We're talking about disease. So this is a disease that affects all people. And if you say that a pandemic doesn't affect you, well, it's very close to home because even if it doesn't affect you, then you know somebody who it affects. And at the very least you know somebody who knows somebody that it affects. It's not that far removed from you. This is something that's going to be at your doorstep. And what is potentially terrifying about pandemics is not only do a lot of these diseases that we see throughout history affect the health and wellbeing of a person, a neighborhood, a community, a country, it also comprises the fabric of society, tears and tugs and pulls at it.

In today's story we're going to talk about one of the most devastating pandemics ever recorded in human history. It was called The Black Death otherwise known as the bubonic plague. Otherwise known as the pestilence that killed between 75 to 200 million people. Caused a religious, and social, and economic upheaval throughout Eurasia, ranging from Egypt all the way up to Italy and beyond, all the way over to China. That is our story today. I think you're going to want to stay tuned for this because it's quite fascinating.

On a cold night, the twilight of the moon illuminated a cobblestone street in Rome, Italy. The silhouette shadow of a slender man moves slowly across the clay wall. He stumbled and he swayed as if intoxicated, aimlessly approaching a small group of people warming up by a bonfire. At the sight of him they scattered away repulsed by his ghastly appearance. The crackling of the flames now paired with the harsh sounds of his hemorrhaging lungs. He coughed wildly, uncontrollably, and unpredictably.

Now it was clear. His staggering had nothing to do with the spirit of alcohol, it had everything to do with the spirit of death. The bubonic plague had set a fast ticking timer on his life. A violent cough shook him and he dropped to the ground, each exhalation expelling mucus, blood, and plague bacteria into the atmosphere. His painful last breath was also a death sentence for someone else. Bacteria droplets whip through the night air to be inhaled by another unsuspecting plague victim. The corrosive power of fear is like a slow-bubbling acid isn't it?

It's abrasive to the spirit. It's burning to the body and eroding away at the mind. And perhaps no time in history has terror held more sway over a humanity than in 1346. It is in this year that the black deaths' frigid hands gripped everyone in the known world. That story I just told you was a bit of narrative fiction of what it might have been like for somebody to be walking up the streets succumbing to this disease. And boy when it comes to diseases, if you could rank them from like 1 to 100, as far as the pain you would go through, the fear that it encapsulated the whole of society in and just the raw power of it all and the sheer ugliness of it all.

This yersinia pestis as The Black Death or The Plague, as actually scientifically known as, is probably one of the worst. Now we're going back to this year of 1346. If you lived in Europe, Asia or Northern Africa, you may have thought the world was coming to an apocalyptic end. Like it was that bad. And for you, it might have been the end, right? It was the end of the world for many, many, many, many people. Anthropologists and historians say that 100 million died. The estimates are all over the place for this thing. But some say, and these are reputable sources, saying that a hundred million died.

And even the most conservative estimates put it at 20 million in Europe alone. Now people were utterly unprepared for a disaster of this magnitude. It brought unprecedented levels of fear, unprecedented levels of despair. It utterly baffled the medical community of this time who still were on the verge of folk medicine and the medical university wasn't up and running yet like it is today. They weren't ready for this. They didn't know where it came from. Not only that but it caused enormous economic strain and ushered in an age of apathy. When I'm talking about apathy I'm talking about normal people just absentmindedly walking around a dead corpse headed to work.

This was like a norm because so many people were dying. And when you think about this it's so sad, but for the living to keep living, life must go on. When I was working on this show, I kind of wondered what is so fascinating about this massive death event in the first place? Why are people so morbidly interested in this? And then I reminded myself that people have been fascinated with death throughout history. I mean, right now at this present time, probably in the top 10 podcasts, you can go and see five serial killer and crime podcasts right now.

I don't talk about war all that much in my history but some of the most popular history and historical narratives that are told are wars and death and more death. Murders, celebrity deaths, violent games, all draws in like a moths to flames. And then if you want to go back further, you've got whole cultures that even worship death. Hades, the Devil or Anubis. Maybe it's our way of dealing with death and the unknown, right? Maybe it's a form of morbid escapism. Or what if people just get a real kick out of death and gore? I don't know but this Black Death story is highly searched, highly sought after, and highly interesting to a large amount of people.

So don't make me feel like I'm alone. Some of you out there are definitely interested in some of this stuff as well. And I ask what does that say about you? What does that say about me? What is it say about us? Well, back to The Black Death. Now let's think about the person in the middle ages. They didn't know that this disease was an infectious bacteria known as yersinia pestis. They were totally unaware that it was a rodent pathogen making its way to humans by way of blood sucking fleas. Antibiotics weren't anywhere in existence. They weren't even a thought yet and they had no form of resistance.

Since we can't provide the answers to those helpless souls, which are now so readily available to us, we again just have to say hindsight really is 20/20. Now we can say with a high degree of certainty that the plague started in Asia. Now it's uncertain if news of those plagues in China and Persia and India made it to the population of Europe. Some European travelers were certainly aware, but if they did get word to the European countries, you must assume that it was brushed off as a foreign problem, or maybe they would just help us to prepare. Either way, the bubonic plague was raging toward them like a violent hurricane on course to the mainland. And they didn't have any weather people to tell them about it.

We don't really see any writing showing that they knew that this was headed for them. And again, if they did know, they didn't really write about it to take it seriously. But once it got there, we have plenty of writings about what happened, the dynamics of it, like how it was affecting people, how many people were dying, just the whole breakdown of society. So the reason that we go to the European source is because they are the most numerous, they are the most direct. They are the ones that put that human side to the numbers and that human suffering to the numbers. When this thing hits Europe, modern Crimea is where we start. This was home to an Eastern outpost of mainland Italy. And from here, the Italian traders, they were these wonderful traders at the time.

They brought back silks and spices and other exotic goods traded from the Far East. Yet this time they were also carrying back something else. That's the thing about trade, right? Because when you trade, you could bring back all the best. All the best of another nation or the best of another country, all of the goods, all their specialties. Whether it be food or the things they wear or their culture. But if there's a disease, then you have a good chance of bringing that back too. And this is exactly what happened. The Italian traders brought back an unintended delivery, a special delivery and it was called The Plague and they brought this to Sicily.

An Italian notary by the name of Gabriele de' Mussi gives a startling account of the diseases' beginnings in Europe. And not really related, but no less interesting, history also gives the first known account of biological warfare. And this was carried out when the Mongols, they called them the Tatars attacked Caffa, a Genoese or Italian trading fortress in the Middle East. Now the Mongols, they started dying in these massive numbers that we know now is because of The Plague, they decided to abandon the military campaign. So this was when the Mongols, they were pushing and pushing. And a lot of historians now think that they almost could have made it and smashed through Europe, but they were turned back, not by some just raw, powerful military force of Europe or of the Genoese outpost, no.

If it weren't for The Plague, they probably would have smashed right through. However, they just started dying and they were like, okay, we're going to abandon this. Let's go ahead and go home. This is too much. We're dying of disease or whatever the case may be. We have got to get out of here, regroup, maybe come back later, but not before catapulting hundreds of Plague written human corpses into the fortress. Morbid I know, but this is really what happened. This is really the depths of human inhumanity like, if we got this, you're going to get it too. This is like one final act of spiteful cruelty. Now some of the Italians fled back to Sicily after this and they brought the bubonic plague with them.

And this is what Gabriele has to say about this. He says "an Eastern settlement under the rule of the Tartar called Tana, which lay to the north of Constantinople and was much frequented by Italian merchants was totally abandoned after an incident there which led to its being besieged and attacked by hordes of Tartar's, who gathered in a short space of time. The Christian merchants who had been driven out by force were so terrified by the power of the Tartar's that to save themselves and their belongings, they fled in an armed ship to Caffa, a settlement in the same part of the world which had been founded long ago by the Genoese.

Oh God! See how the heathen Tartar's race pouring together from all sides, suddenly invaded the city of Caffa and besieged to trap Christians there for almost three years. There, hemmed in by an immense army, they could hardly draw a breath. Although food could be shipped in, which offered them some hope, but behold, the whole army was affected by a disease which overran the Tartar's and killed thousands upon thousands every day. It was as though arrows were raining down from heaven striking across the Tartar's arrogance. All medical advice and attention was useless. The Tartar's died as soon as the signs of disease appeared on their bodies. Swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating tumors, followed by a putrid fever.

The Tartar's, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But then ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city and hoped that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them. Although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could into the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply. And the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army.

Moreover, one infected man could carry the poison to others and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew or could discover a means of defense. Thus, almost everyone who had been in the East or in the regions to the South and North fell victim to sudden death after contracting this pestilential disease. As it struck by a lethal arrow, which raised a tumor on their bodies, the scale of the mortality and the form which it took persuaded those who lived weeping and lamenting through the bitter events of 1346 to 1348. The Chinese, Indians, Persians, Meads, Curds, Armenians, Sicilians, Georgians, Mesopotamians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, Sarcans, and Greeks.

For almost all the East had been affected that the last judgment had come. As it happened, among those who escaped from Caffa by boat, were a few sailors who had been infected with the poisonous disease. Some boats were bound for Genoa. Others went to Venice and others to other Christian areas. When the sailors reached these places and mixed with the people there, it was as if they had brought the evil spirits with them. Every city. Every settlement. Every place was poisoned by the contagious pestilence. And their inhabitants, both men and women, died suddenly. And when one person contracted the illness, he poisoned his whole family. Even as he fell and died those preparing to bury his body were seized by death the same way.

Thus death entered through the windows and the cities and towns were depopulated. Their inhabitants mourn their dead neighbors." I don't think the most profound Stephen King novel could portray the horrors of real life pestilence cost back in the 14th century. And this level of fear and death may be alien to those who've never lived through a great epidemic or through a war or a famine. And yet, if we look around, we can still see epidemic and war and famine. And now in my own lifetime, we could see a pandemic. So in this way, now we can connect the past to the present, right? We can see a little bit of what they were going through.

Kind of see how they dealt with such devastation and such death. You can walk in the shoes a little bit. Now the Black Death pandemic raises some morbidly curious questions, like what is death? So let's put death this way, just if we wanted to give it a one word summary. It is the irreversible cessation of organismic functioning. Like when our brain or our vital organs shut down. Or maybe we could take it a bit further. It is the irreversible cessation of the capacity for consciousness. Like when we stop thinking, or maybe when we stop becoming aware we die. And then it goes into the question: is there an afterlife?

Then there's the real effects of death on the living, especially during the plague. So there's all these philosophic ponderings that you could think about like when you think about what is death. And then you can get into the religious with that whole afterlife. Or maybe we come back or maybe there is a heaven or maybe there is nirvana or maybe we just poof into nothingness or maybe we just don't know. And it's okay that we don't know. Whatever your religious leaning, secular or non-secular, we've all pondered death. And we will probably continue to ponder death and what it means to die, until we die. And I do wonder how would you cope if one in four of your family and friends are getting sick and then dying within days?

Like this is unprecedented! I can't even wrap my mind around it! One in four. That means if you live with your brother, with your mother, and your father, one of them is going to die. No question. And then you go over to like your cousins and your aunt and uncle, and then you have two cousins. Well, one of them are going to die. So in the same week, maybe you lost your brother and maybe you lost your uncle and maybe lost your friend, or maybe your friend's sister, or maybe your friend's mother. Like this is the levels of death that we're talking about here. So what is the moral and emotional turmoil like when you have to choose, even if you have a choice.

You can either stay and care for your dying husband or wife or child, knowing you were almost certainly going to become ill yourself or just abandon them. Live for another day. Now we could say it's a very easy choice but you weren't there and you don't have to make that choice. So you don't know. And then there's even more, there's so many questions, right? How do rulers and leaders and officials pacify a rapidly dying population when you want to preside over that? Everybody says they want to be a leader, right? Like you want to be President of the United States? Or you wanna be a king? Or do you want to be a queen over that? I don't think I would. How do you convince them to keep on functioning, to keep on working, to keep on pushing on and to keep society going?

Now the 20th century philosopher Gabriel Marcel would say this was a grand battle of hope and despair. And that hope is what got them through. He says, "where despair denies that anything in reality is worthy of credit. Hope affirms that reality will ultimately prove worthy of an infinite credit. The complete engagement and disposal of myself." So there have always been those who in the face of catastrophe stood up and said life is still worth living. Imagine though if every single person in a catastrophe fell to despair. Imagine it's like a grand seesaw of humanity during this plague.

Then you have despair on one side and hope on the other side. Now that ebbs and flows. Sometimes it might be balanced but a lot of times during this plague, despair was on the uptick. Who would put out the fires if everyone gave into despair? Who would tend to the sick? Who would rebuild the houses? Who would protect the innocent? Only the hopeful? This probably would have been one of hope's biggest battles, right? Like no one in the world could have imagined this magnitude of social and economic and physical devastation of The Plague. One of the best sources we have on the Black Death is another contemporary by the name of Giovanni Boccaccio. Now I've filtered what seems like hundreds of Black Death first-hand accounts.

Boccaccio I chose because he presents The Plague in high definition. Like some of the other people are very systematic about how they write but he brings a lot of color and colorization to the history. Again some of the accounts are dry and they're court records and they just don't do justice to the devastation. Boccaccio gives the most compelling account and is an expert in poetry and prose. He inspired Shakespeare even. And you know, he's going to give you all of these little details that are going to make you feel like you were there. So his book that was entitled The Decameron is considered a literary classic for its depth of storytelling.

But the books' introduction is what's most important to us because it tells a vivid and real life account of The Black Death and he talks about its symptoms, its impact on society, and how people responded to it. So this is going to be the crux of the rest of what we're going to talk about here is Boccaccio's account. So take, for instance, what he says about the symptoms of The Black Death. He says "the symptoms were not the same as in the East where a gush of blood from the nose was the plain sign of inevitable death. On the contrary, its earliest symptom in men and women alike was the appearance of certain swellings in the groin or under the armpit.

Some of which were egg-shaped whilst others were roughly the size of a common apple. Sometimes the swelling's were large, sometimes not so large. And they were referred to by the populous as gavoccioli. From the two areas already mentioned, this deadly gavoccioli would begin to spread and within a short time it would appear random all over the body. Many people began to find dark blotches and bruises on their arms and thighs and other parts of the body. Against these maladies, it seemed that all of the advice of physicians and all the power of medicine were profitless and unavailing. Perhaps the nature of the illness was such that it allowed no remedy.

Or perhaps those people who are treating the illness, being ignorant of its causes, were not prescribing the appropriate cure. In all events, few of those who caught it ever recovered and most causes of death occurred within three days from the appearance of the symptoms. But what made this pestilence even more severe was that whenever those suffering from it mixed with the people who were still unaffected, it would rush upon these with the speed of a fire racing through dry or oily substances that happened to be placed within its reach. Nor was this the full extent of its evil. For not only did it infect healthy persons who conversed or had any dealings with the sick, making them ill or visiting an equally horrible death upon them.

But it also seemed to transfer the sickness to anyone touching the clothes or other objects which had been handled or used by its victims." How would you respond after realizing you have plague symptoms? Maybe at first you'd cope through denial, refusing to accept the cough or the fever. Maybe you try to play off that huge golf ball size swelling on your groin or on your armpit. It's just a bug bite. It's okay. It's nothing. But how long would it take for you to come to terms with your death?

How will we come to terms with it now? I'm going to die. And so are you. I'm reminded of a reading that I did on something called terror management theory, based on the work of a social psychologist named Ernest Becker, who did a great many fascinating studies on how we deal with death and the sheer terror of it all. And I was moved when he said, "man is literally split into two. He has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness and that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty. And yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever."

Heavy stuff. This existential crisis that we are going to die one day. Something we can deny all we want. In a culture that I live in we are kind of death denying. We act like we're going to live forever. And we have to deal with this sad and tragic reality sometimes though. This isn't one of my happier shows. If you were looking for something a little more upbeat, I suggest you go listen to a happy song or something else after you listen to this. I don't want to depress you or anything like that, but I just want to ask some real questions that we don't really ask that much. This is the discussion that needs to be had. Have it with me. Who else? Better to have this topical discussion about death.

What better time and what better event to look at when it was in such abundance? As I researched more into The Black Death I also began to wonder about the mass psychological shock of a pandemic like this. How does a raging disease affect the mindset of large groups of people? The collective human consciousness, if you want to call it that. Now I once saw a video where one man took off running and screaming past a group and then reactively the other people started running and screaming in the same direction. So with The Black Death if one person started acting out in despair or living like there was no tomorrow did others follow that lead? Boccaccio shows us that the disease triggered collective panic.

It triggered collective suspicion and it triggered collective anxiety. It fostered isolation and apathy and a meaningless view of life unparalleled in the history of such a deeply religious Europe. This disease instantly changed the national mood and altered the collective psychology. He says, "almost all without exception, they took a single and very inhuman precaution, namely to avoid a runaway from the sick and their belongings, by which all means, they all thought that their own health would be preserved. Some people were of the opinion that a sober and abstemious mode of living considerably reduced the risk of infection.

They therefore formed themselves into groups and lived in isolation from everyone else. Having withdrawn to comfortable abode where there were no sick people. They locked themselves in and settled down to a peaceable existence. Consuming modest quantities of delicate foods and precious wines, avoiding all excesses. They refrain from speaking to outsiders. Refuse to receive news of the dead or sick and entertain themselves with music and whatever other amusements they were able to devise. Others took the opposite view and maintained that an infallible way of warding off this appealing evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go around singing and merrymaking, gratifying all of one's cravings whenever the opportunity offered.

And shrug off the whole thing as one enormous joke. Moreover, they practice what they preach to the best of their ability for they would visit one tavern after another. Drinking all day and night to immoderate excess. For people behaved as though their days were numbered and treated their belongings and their own persons with equal abandon. Hence, most houses have become common property and any passing stranger could make himself at home as naturally as though he were the rightful owner. But for all the riotous manner of living, these people always took good care to avoid any contact with the sick. There were many other people who steered a middle course, neither restricting their diet nor indulging and drinking and other forms of wantoness.

But simply doing no more than satisfy their appetite. Instead of incarcerating themselves, these people moved about freely. Holding in their hands a posy of flowers or fragrant herbs, which they applied at frequent intervals to their nostrils thinking it an excellent idea to fortify the brain with smells from the scent of the dead bodies and sickness and medicines that seem to fill and pollute the whole of that atmosphere. Some people pursuing what was possibly the safer alternative, callously maintained that there was no better remedy against the plague than to run away from it. Numbers of men and women abandoned their city, their homes, their relatives, their states, their belongings, and headed for the countryside."

Deep within human beings there seems to be a primitive emotion or a set of primitive emotions. Ones that most of us contain, control, and filter through a layer of rational thought or religious belief or moral belief or consciousness. But what happens when that morality switch is turned off. In a pandemic, the scale of The Black Plague, it appears more and more of these irrational fears and emotions come to the surface. The unthinkable becomes thinkable. The unspeakable becomes spoken. The un-doable becomes doable. In crisis this fear and irrationality consumes many of us. Frenzy and fear take shape.

Fear of separation and abandonment. Fear of being controlled by a plague out of control. Fear of an invasion by sickness of extinction and no longer being. The fear of shame and the loss of self-worth. All these fears are multiplied, magnified in times of crisis and pandemic and Boccaccio again relates this breakdown during The Black Death. He says, "in the face of so much affliction and misery, all respect for the laws of God and man had virtually broken down and been extinguished from our city. For like everyone else, those ministers and executioners of the laws who are not either dead or ill were left with so few subordinates that they were unable to discharge any of their duties.

Hence everyone was free to behave as he pleased. One citizen avoided another. Hardly any neighbor troubled about others. Relatives never or hardly ever visited each other. Moreover, such a terror was struck into the hearts of men and women by this calamity, that brother abandoned brother and the uncle his nephew and the sister, her brother, and very often the wife, her husband. What is even worse and nearly incredible was that fathers and mothers refuse to see and tend their children as if they had not been theirs. Thus a multitude of sick men and women were left without any care, except from the charity of friends. But these were few. Or greed of servants though not many of these could have been had even for high wages.

Moreover, most of them were coarse minded men and women who did little more than bring the sick what they asked for or watch over them when they were dying. And very often these servants lost their lives and their earnings. The Black Death caused an unimaginable death toll. How many pits and trenches must have been dug to cover these millions of bodies. Some of them have been recovered now, to the shock of archeologists. If the dead could cry out, what would they say?" And in this final quote that I'll share of Boccaccio he paints a detailed picture of what all that death was like. He says, "the plight of the lower and most of the middle classes was even more pitiful to behold.

Most of them remained in their houses either in poverty or in hopes of safety and fell sick by thousands. Since they received no care and attention, almost all of them die. Many ended their lives in the streets, both at night and during the day. And many others who died in their houses were only known to be dead because their neighbors smelled their decaying bodies. Dead bodies filled every corner. Most of them are treated in the same manner by the survivors who were more concerned to get rid of their rotting bodies then moved by charity toward the dead. There were no tears or candles or mourners to honor the dead. In fact, no more respect was awarded dead people than would nowadays be shown toward dead goats.

The scale of the calamity caused them to regard it with indifference. With the aid of porters, if they could get them, they carry the bodies out of their houses and lay them at the door where every morning quantities of dead might be seen. They then were laid on buyers or as they were often lacking on tables. Such was the multitude of corpses brought to the church every day in almost every hour that there was not enough consecrated ground to give them burial. So since the cemeteries were full they were forced to dig huge trenches where they buried the bodies by the hundreds." Here they stowed them away like bales and the hold of a ship and covered them with little earth until the whole trench was filled.

Many of us are preoccupied with defying, dodging, and denying death. Only when a loved one dies or faced with catastrophe is this superficial relationship with our mortality transforming, transformed into something substantial. An intimate closeness with the dying can rock our assumptions about one another and about life. And it tends to make people cling to some sort of immortality. Like the religions that promise an afterlife or having more children or acquiring wealth so that we can pass it down. This is all perceived as permanence. And I think this studying of The Black Death reminds us that society is fragile and that our time on earth is limited.

Although all societies and cultures deal with it differently, death is one thing all of humanity has in common. We're all going to die. And for all of this devastation, the Black Death shows us that through sustained collective and individual action, though, we can hope and we can cope and we can survive. We can maintain levels of social order and collective hope in the worst of times. In the face of our own individual deaths and the deaths of our families. In the face of impending ecological disaster, a nuclear disaster, a technological disaster or financial catastrophe or whatever we're facing, the human being is always going to struggle.

But in that struggle we can find hope that we can overcome that struggle. So this example of The Black Death provides hope that humanity can survive. We can also look back and mourn the collective losses of humanity and all those who died all across the world. Balance is the message of this. Hope and despair, always in the balance. Let's let hope win out, let us survive. Let us balance the despair. Mourn those we lost and continue to move forward. Thank you all for tuning in.

This is Jermaine Fowler with The Humanity Archive. If you want to see my sources for this work, you can head on over to the website www.thehumanityarchive.com and search The Black Death and you'll see the books that I read and some of the articles that I went to so that you can study this topic further. It's morbidly fascinating. Sometimes I have to dig into inhumanity in tragedy because this is all a part of our humanity. So even though some of the things that we talked about were quite disturbing in this show, I think it's necessary to show that other side, that shadow side, those dark events that we've experienced in human history, and that we're still going to continue to go through and that we go through today.

So if you will do me a great big favor, go ahead and hit the like button. Follow me on Instagram. Follow me on Facebook. Subscribe on iTunes. Leave a comment. That's very helpful to me in growing the show, continuing to build it, but I hope you share it, like it, and continue to come back. Next time we'll dive into another topic of human history. This is Jermaine Fowler with The Humanity Archive. I will see you next time.

The Real Story of Pocahontas

I don't think it's a stretch to say that most of you are familiar with the story of Pocahontas, the Native American woman so famous in the story of American colonization. Yet I wonder how many of you have heard the story the way that I'm going to tell it? The way that Pocahontas' people probably wanted it to be told. But let's first start the story off in August of 1609, when the people dwelling in the fort at Jamestown, Virginia were in a state of utter panic. You see these settlers' history is inextricably linked with the story of Pocahontas and if you stick with me, I'll show you how.

So just a couple of years earlier, these roughly 100 people settled a small patch of land bordering the Chesapeake Bay under the banner of the Virginia Company and King James of England. It was the first English settlement in what will be known as America. These small group of settlers had traveled nearly 4,000 miles over ocean. Then almost immediately suffered tremendously from diseases that we probably take for granted today, right? We have modern medicine. So we don't think about things like dysentery, fever, typhoid. All contracted by drinking untreated swamp water.

Then there was the famine. This extreme hunger. There's no other way to put it. But in many ways, the colonists had brought this on themselves. You see, many of them were wealthy businessmen and most wealthy businessmen don't get wealthy by working. So they had no real practical survival skills. Instead of hunting and planting, they did what any good businessmen would do when they prospected for gold. This refusal to work, or plant crops, or to dig fresh water wells, which would sustain them, brought them crippling famine. The situation was so grave in fact, so desperate by winter, they resorted to the whore that has followed a great deal of famine since forever, cannibalism.

The word itself was taboo, forbidden. I can't imagine what it feels like to starve. I've fasted a few times in my life. After 24 hours, I was eating like a wolf, but I can't begin to understand being so hungry that I'd consider eating the flesh of my own species. It just doesn't cross my mind. Or to be driven mad with the all consuming thought of just a bite of food, hunger pangs that cripple you. I can't imagine any of this. It's easy for us to say we wouldn't do this from the comfort of our chairs or the grocery store up the street, but just remember throughout history a higher percentage of people have resorted to cannibalism than you would like to imagine. And in this Jamestown colony, a 14 year old girl was murdered and eaten.

Anthropologist Doug Owsley says, "by the butcher marks on her skull and shin bone, the assailants were clearly interested in the cheek meat muscles of the face, tongue, and brain." Now not to start this show off on a morbid note but this builds a picture of the condition of the settlers Pocahontas and her tribe would come in contact with. These were settlers that were starving for food. They were ravenous for gold and they had a pig-like appetite for more and more land. And not only this but they also had Guns, Germs and Steel, nod to Jared Diamond for that wonderful book.

So with this backdrop, you could literally know nothing about Native American history and put two and two together and see how this story is about to play out. I can't spoil it for you. You already know how the story turns out for the Native Americans unfortunately. Historians estimate that there were 50,000 natives living in what is now the Commonwealth of Virginia. The group that Pocahontas was part of and the colonists encountered first were the Powhatan nation. They didn't call the land Virginia. It was Tsenacommacah. Pocahontas' father, who the settlers called Chief Powhatan, his native name was Wahunsenaca.

But he ruled over 15,000 people or 30 tribes in his powerful kingdom and at times the Powhatan dealt with the English with hospitality and goodwill. They traded and they brought them food. And other times they raided and murdered the settlers when they wandered off too far. And the question I wondered was had they heard about the Spanish conquest of their neighbors to the South? If so, of course they wanted to keep the English contained. If not, murder, atrocity, brutality and all those things that come along with colonization would befall them. So Pocahontas will find herself born in a point in history where the 10,000 year old history of her people would come to an end.

Her story is not only an individual tale of survival and heroism, but the story of a wholesale plundering and robbery of Native American land and resources. It reminds us that America did not start as a democracy but as an aggressive capitalist empire. A sad reminder, a painful reminder, but a reminder, nonetheless. And it also reminds us that if it weren't for the goodwill, the wisdom and the knowledge of the first people otherwise known in America as the Native Americans, there would be no democracy.

Welcome to The Humanity Archive where we dig through history to find our best in our worst examples, all in an attempt to answer that most fundamental and basic question. What does it mean to be human? I'm your gracious host Jermaine Fowler and I'm very excited to be here and bring this show to you today. You heard a little bit in the introduction about the figure that we'll be talking about. Her name was Pocahontas. When I decided to do this show, I didn't know that it would be largely shaped by a single source because I always consult many books, many sources, and try to be thorough in my research and scholarship for the shows and the articles that I write.

When I found this one book, I realized that in nearly 400 years, not a single book about the life of Pocahontas was written by a Native American. I couldn't help but see the significance in this. This would be like the life of cheetahs being only written by lions, some similarities, but you don't get the perspective of the cheetah. Similarly with Pocahontas, the life of her and her Native American people were only written from the perspective of the colonists. And even though this happened later, it is very significant to me that a Native American finally was able to lead the charge in some scholarship in a book about Pocahontas.

This book was by Paula Gunn and it's called Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat. Now I became highly interested in sharing this alternate perspective. Something different than the mainstream story that you're probably used to. It's not uncommon for legitimate revisions to happen in history. Think of a detective who revisits evidence and then he draws a different conclusion than the one that previously was stated based on the new evidence that's found. Now Gunn centers her story of Pocahontas within the Native American Powhatan culture in a way that I think aligned with the truth far more than the popular narratives.

If you look at a lot of the other books that give a sense that this was some hero story on the account of the colonists. Their books, for instance, entitled Jamestown Adventure or Pocahontas: American Princess with all these misnomers and falsities right in the title even. And I really don't think they capture the real essence of what really happened there in Jamestown, Virginia, back in the 17th century. And I gotta say it's difficult to talk about Pocahontas without talking about the Disney cartoon movie from 1995 and there I think lies a big, huge problem because the real history is so intertwined with a mostly fiction cartoon musical.

Now some may say that it's just a movie, but if they named it after the real Pocahontas, this was a real life. I think these historically inaccurate movies do more harm than good. Presenting a painful past in a sing songy, family-friendly, stereotypey, non-factual fantasy. It's a cartoon that whitewashes and hides a horrific past. Psychologists have long recognized that the images we see affect the way we view ourselves. Far from romanticizing European and native relations like the movie, Gunn and some other historians like Helen C. Rountree strip out all of this romanticism and they want you to see the dark nature of the Native and English encounters.

Their aim is to show you Pocahontas through a Native American viewpoint and I think that's profoundly important. As I read the work of Gunn, I was curious how was she able to reconstruct this different viewpoint? Because the sources that have been out from the Europeans they've been out since around the time that all of this happened. I mean Captain John Smith, he wrote his account soon after he was in Jamestown or when he was in Jamestown. So these things have been available for centuries. Where did she get this new information from? And she revisited the oral history of the Mattaponi tribe. Now this is one of the 30 tribes incorporated into the Powhatan nation.

They have passed down these stories from generation to generation to generation about Pocahontas. They are the surviving tribe most closely associated with the Powhatan and who have maintained this history throughout the centuries. So they also had a story to tell. One that I think commands respect. It's a story that passed down like a blazing torch year after year and generation after generation. America I think has been slow to appreciate, understand or acknowledge oral traditions. Not quick to include these in the historic record, yet Gunn's book is a recognition of the Native American scholars and the elders who passed down the story for over 400 years.

And it's a recognition of the sturdiness of human memory. It's a recognition that the oral story still needs to be told. I came across a quote from a geneticist named Wes Jackson that really speaks to this point about oral history. And he says, "a necessary part of our intelligence is on the line as the oral tradition becomes less and less important. There was a time throughout our land when it was common for stories to be told and retold. A most valuable exercise. For the story retold, reexamined over and over again at different levels of intellectual and emotional growth." So he's saying that as we retell our stories, review them from different maturity levels, and if you look at civilization as having a life span like a human you mature as you grow older and you may put a different wisdom on the story as you retell.

It is not static just sitting in a book. It's being reformed based on the new knowledge and a new position that you're in or the community is in or tribe is in or any civilization is in. So he's saying, we should not lose this. This is highly important. Now in Gunn's book, there's this beautiful timeline that she laid out with significant dates in Pocahontas' life. This is all based on the oral history. So this is what I used as the format for today's program. Blending the oral history with some of the accounts of the English and other historians who put a premium on the Powhatan side of the story. I just wanted to make that clear.

This is from the Powhatan perspective as closely as I can find it. If we look back further to 1595, we can see more about the Powhatan also called Wahunsenaca, and I'll further refer to them as the Powhatan at risk of totally mutilating that word, which I'm sure is beautiful as said then in its native tongue. Powhatan, he was the Native American leader and father of Pocahontas and he presided over the Powhatan empire, so named after him. He was a powerful chief. He presided over at least 30 Algonquin speaking tribes.

The Mattaponi again whose oral history we're using is one of them. He is estimated to have ruled between 13,000 and 34,000 people. In regards to his military ability, if you wanted to know about that, we're told he could call about 1,500 soldiers into the field. Now this is an important fact given that they would be clashing so much with the English here soon. So Powhatan gains power and status and wealth through the usual means that we're familiar with. Through inheritance, intimidation, and marriage. With this, his realm stretched about 6,000 square miles from modern-day Alexandria, Virginia all the way to the North Carolina border.

The Algonquin-speaking Powhatan called their land, Senacumocco meaning densely inhabited land. Just giving you an idea that there were a lot of people here. Now I think we always like to think of the Native Americans as nomadic, but those like the Powhatan were settled farmers. They practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, planting everything from small plants all the way up to tall trees. They had small plots. They grew maize, beans, squash and corn. And there were towns and there were temples and canoes for transportation and they had a government. Powhatan was the chief of many chiefs. Now one person who writes beautifully about the history of the Powhatan, highly recommend her story, is Helen C.

Rountree. She spent her whole life writing about and researching the history of the Powhatan and their descendants, and she has a fascinating book called Pocahontas' People and what she says, "chiefs called werowances could be male or female and were creatures set apart. They kept in travel with large retinues. They received elaborate welcomes when they reached their destinations. The welcomes included feasting, dancing, oratory and for the men, young female bedmates at night. Chiefs had the power to punish disobedience with quick death by knocking out the brains.

They presided over the execution of thieves and murderers were bound and thrown into a fire to burn to death. Werowances knew how to procure their own food but they normally had huntsmen to bring in game and whole towns to plant crops especially for them. They also collected tribute, which consisted of tan deer skin, pearls, and maize. When they died they received special burials. Werowances acquired their positions through a matrilineal inheritance. So the chiefs were afforded all of the accouterment powers of governor or a head of state or king. We tend to, and most definitely the earlier Europeans, view the Powhatan through their differences and not their similarities. Their religions, temples, class systems, marriage, customs, and raising of children."

Their culture wasn't perfect. Very draconian laws it seems as far as if you're guilty of murder, how you would be executed, but at the same time, they developed in a way that was no more or less brutal or otherwise than any other civilization throughout history. In 1596 Matoaka was born. This was one of Pocahontas' other names. Powhatan fathers this daughter and he names her Amonute. And then she goes by Matoaka. Many accounts call her a spirited young girl who liked to do cartwheels. She's given the childhood nickname of Pocahontas or playful one.

And if you are like me, you'll notice that Pocahontas again had many names, but that's the one that stuck. And I wondered how would I feel if I was forever called by my childhood nickname throughout history. Like I died and I was this famous person and nobody called me Jermaine, they called me by Baby J. That's what my parents called me when I was a kid. I think I would have a problem with that. But Pocahontas is what sticks, so we call her by her childhood nickname. At any rate the Mattaponi history relates that Pocahontas was given a dream vision in 1603. They say that she sees ships with white sails, the villages of her peoples vanishing, piles of rugged bones and strange bearded white men come ashore from the ocean.

One thing I think many indigenous people have in common is the dream vision. This belief in the ability to tap into the unconscious and foresee future events. And I was once looking through an old encyclopedia article, this was published way back in 1907 in a book titled The Handbook of American Indians. It says, "the general belief concerning dreams and visions seems to have been that mental images seen with closed eyes, were not fancies, but actual glimpses of the unseen world. Or dwelt the generic types of all things and where all the events that were to take place in the visible world were determined and prefigured." So this encyclopedia is saying that when an indigenous culture who believes in the dream vision and relates that as part of their being, they close their eyes and they see a thing.

This is a premonition of something that may or may not happen in the real world. They don't disconnect the two. And I think a lot of people will be quick to write off this trust in the supernatural and the unseen. This idea that unseen forces or spiritual forces are at work and guide us and they warn us and they protect us. Until you snap out of it and realize that 2.1 billion Christians believe in the supernatural and the unseen. 1.8 billion Muslims believe in the supernatural and the unseen. As a matter of fact, the larger part of humanity believes in the supernatural and the unseen. So let's not be so quick to write off the dream vision of the indigenous peoples in the Native Americans.

But moving on to 1608 enters Captain John Smith. We're told he's taken captive by the Powhatan tribe. Captain John Smith being that English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, Admiral of New England, and author that you've heard so much about in the story. He's the one depicted in the movie as being saved by Pocahontas and they fall in love. He's probably the most well-known person in the story aside from Pocahontas herself. He played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, but I'm not going to spend much time on him because his accounts are so well-known. But a lot of times they're largely refuted as arrogant embellishments of the truth.

Embellishments of his encounters with the Powhatan. Pocahontas then becomes a translator, exchanging the English and Algonquin languages and she meets Smith as a kid. Powhatan builds a trusting relationship with Smith and offers him the title of werowance or Chief of the English within the Powhatan nation. At this point it seems that Powhatans still looked at the English as possible allies. And he still looked at them as subordinates and why not? Because to him they couldn't even feed themselves. They hadn't proven themselves. They were starving. Can we really blame him for looking at them as people who didn't pose much of a threat? So as a further act of peace, he offers Smith and the English a more habitable place to live within the Powhatan nation than on Jamestown Island.

And they start sending them food and resources at regular intervals. And this is where we really see that the Powhatan saved the English experiment, thus saving the American experiment. Colonist George Percy writes, "our men were destroyed with cruel diseases, but for the most part, they died of mere famine. Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distress. It please God after a while to send the Virginia Indians, which were our mortal enemies, to relieve us with bread, corn, fish and flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of our weak and starving men otherwise we had all perished. Also we were frequented by many kings in the country bringing the supplies to our great comfort."

So here's where Pocahontas really comes into the picture in a big way. There are firsthand accounts that described her as about 12 years old here, and they say she used to come and play and do cartwheels at the fort. Once she attended a diplomatic venture to the fort accompanied by her guide named Rawhun, where they negotiated the release of some prisoners and you can look at the relations between the settlers and the natives like an ocean tide at this point, ebbing and flowing back and forth. Sometimes giving, sometimes taking. The settlers push in a little bit sometimes and they're pushed back by the gravity of the Native Americans, but eventually the settlers will grow stronger in weapons and resources as more people start to come in from England.

They also grow audacity and they begin to start pounding at the Native American surfer shoreline, literally covering more and more land. This is how they advance and this is how they spread and this is how they start taking over the land of the Powhatan and the other Native American tribes. So with all this, in 1610 Pocahontas married a man named Kocoum and life kind of goes on in many regards. The oral history tells Pocahontas of marrying this tribal warrior and this fact I thought that was curiously left out of the popular narrative. It's corroborated in the English sources and William Strachey, a secretary of Jamestown, listed him as among the favorites of Powhatan so you definitely have different sources talking about this marriage.

Why isn't this included in the popular narrative? Is it by accident or is it a sort of lying by omission? In the popular story the only way Pocahontas is humanized is through the so-called positive relations with the Europeans and not through her pain. Excuse me for thinking this is purposeful. An example of history being not used, but abused. And it is here that Pocahontas gives birth to her first son. We don't know his name. It's lost to history but most never fathom Pocahontas had a first son at all. This adds a level of depth and tragedy to her story. Now think about this. Pocahontas was a person with a life and a family outside of contact with colonists.

She had a life separate from them that we don't even get told about. She had a life and family outside of contact with colonists. A family and a life she would soon be forced from. If this were one of the movies that were made, how would that change things? Now the English were still bent on expansion and were putting up stubborn resistance to the Powhatan and the other tribes on the fringes of the empire, slowly pushing further in. With the combination of trade and diplomacy and persistent military campaigns they pushed forward. Then the unthinkable happened. After a skirmish, they killed some women and children and Powhatan then declares all out war.

All assistance stops. This is called the first Anglo-Powhatan war. Yet one might wonder why does Powhatan never launch a large scale military campaign against Jamestown and try to crush it? Like amass all of his forces, 1,500, ultimately just crush Jamestown? And it makes me wonder if Powhatan took this category five hurricane level threat that was the Europeans like a thunderstorm. When you prepare for a thunderstorm, you're preparing for a bother and for inconvenience but not the real catastrophic threat that you would for a category five hurricane.

This was a catastrophic threat to the Powhatan way of life and culture. But I wonder if he could have amassed a great army to go on the offensive. Had he done so, could this have rippled through America for a grand Native American resistance? We'll never know. But at this point Powhatan was getting old and it is said that he "delighted in security and pleasure." Doesn't seem like the innovative warrior state of mind needed to stand a chance against a European threat. So Powhatan was not the leader to do it. And if he was, we have to wonder if he was even capable of doing it.

At this point in the story enters a Captain named Samuel Argall. He's a recent arrival to Jamestown and he'd heard about Pocahontas. And then he hashes a diabolical plot to take her as a hostage, to kidnap her. After he hears of the Anglo-Powhatan war he reasoned that he could use her to checkmate the tribe into English demands. And in this act of betrayal to Powhatan one of his subordinate tribes assists in the capture of her. We see this over and over again. I always see this in warfare. The seeds of dissent are sown amongst two different tribes or two different factions. So the dominant power will pit two different factions who may have had a loose alliance against each other.

Religious studies professor Charles Lippy puts it this way, "everywhere European settled was encroachment on tribal lands. For much a tribal culture was intimately linked to the land. So every movement of tribal people from ancestral lands whittled away at the integrity of tribal society with its deep religious dimension. As Europeans sought alliances with tribal people, with their own contest for a colonial empire, those alliances also undermine the fabric of Native life. These arrangements not only pitted the tribe against tribe but lured the Natives into thinking the colonial power they favored would assure their survival of tribal life."

So even though Powhatan was over many tribes, the central government was not strong enough to withstand the undercutting tactics and maneuvers of the English. And we can only imagine a young Pocahontas, now 17 at this point, full of fear and full of tragic depression. Kidnapped and now a prisoner of war. Not knowing what would happen to her. Devastated by immense loss. Her husband, her son, her tribe, her father. The Mattaponi history makes no mistake about her depression state and they also tell us of some other grim realities of physical and psychological despair.

We cannot hide from the fact that sexual violence was entrenched in a European colonists behavior. The history states she was also raped. And this was followed by religious indoctrination and forced assimilation. All, again, deeply tied to European colonization. Maybe this is why the real story of Pocahontas isn't told because real stories are often painful. This history shows Pocahontas is a real life example of the inhumanity deep within the beginning of the American empire.

And then next the English accounts report that her and the settler named John Rolfe fell in love. But I wondered how exactly can a prisoner fall in love with their captor? Pocahontas' anglicization was complete in 1613. Now imagine this for a moment. You're wrenched away from your family, your religion, your political systems, your core beliefs, customs, and culture. You have to give up all these things that make you distinctively you. Even your birthday, your family, your music, your favorite songs that you like to listen to, your clothes, your way of speaking, and even your birth name. Again, this is exactly what happened to Pocahontas and thousands of other Native Americans in this process called anglicization.

The process of taking and remaking something just a little bit more European. And Pocahontas, she's given the English identity and this English name, renamed Lady Rebecca. And it's very hard not to think of Pocahontas' life as a series of catastrophes. The catastrophe of her culture and way of life. The catastrophe of her loved ones killed. The catastrophe of her womanhood under male domination. The catastrophe of her family. It goes on and on and on.

And again, in 1614, she marries John Rolfe and this is often packaged as a good thing, but he was under financial pressure. He was also twice her age. And again, he was part of her group of captors. How much in love could they have been? A strong theory is that Rolfe acted to assure the British crown that relations were positive between the Powhatan and the Jamestown colony. The crown wouldn't really support a risky investment so he hoped that marriage would get him the support he needed for his new tobacco enterprise. Follow the money. The English story portrays Pocahontas and Rolfe marrying in this love, this state of bliss.

But I find this unlikely. And again, if true, it's disturbing. A case of a victim coming to sympathize with her captor. What is portrayed as love would have been survival, would have been a survival instinct, a sort of Stockholm syndrome on the count of Pocahontas. A prisoner cannot fall in love with a warden, can they? Now this marriage does cause an uneasy peace though. Yet it isn't an easier or a romantic peace. It's kind of like the peace two nations have when they have a nuclear warhead still aimed at one another. Europeans were still expanding. Natives were still raiding. Yet there was also trade and the exchange of some goods and knowledge during this time.

This peace of Pocahontas as it's sometimes called. Some of the Europeans even ran off to live in the native villages, preferring their way of life. You see some English teaching the Natives how to use firearms. The Natives teaching the English how to plant. But this peace wouldn't last. It's a flimsy peace based on a kidnapping, remember? And then partly because the discovery of tobacco was this cash crop filled up the gas tank of greed and the English snapped out of it and realized they were there for an imperialist, capitalistic expansion, not to get buddy buddy with the Native American tribes.

And the English during this time they remind me of the Greek myth of Midas. The Greek myth highlights consequences of excessive greed. King Midas so worshiped gold that when granted a wish by the God Dionysus he asked that every single thing he touched turned to gold. Midas' wish was granted and everything Midas touched did turn to gold. He became very wealthy in fact. But since everything he touched turned to gold there was some unexpected consequences of his greed. The food he loved to taste turned to gold. The people he loved turned to gold. His best friends turned to gold. He couldn't enjoy anything because it all turned to gold.

We learn from the King Midas story that greed is not good. Think about the English lust for gold and stuff ruined what could have been a far better experiment in human relations in history. One that favored the common interest instead of a singular interest. One that favored humanity rather than inhumanity and cooperation instead of war and retaliation. English colonists had the King Midas syndrome. Now in 1615 Pocahontas births a child who is named Thomas Rolfe. The oral tradition makes it a point to say that Thomas Rolfe was born out of wedlock. A birth from her rape and not the blood child of John Rolfe.

Undoubtedly Pocahontas was victimized and she wouldn't have had any recourse or redress. A year later in 1616, Lady Rebecca or Pocahontas as we're calling her, is introduced to the highest society of England. She's taken from Jamestown to England and presented as Lady Rebecca. Oral historians theorized that this was equal parts charade and parade. She was presented as the princess of the great Powhatan, married to Captain John Rolfe and she was presented as this living proof of these excellent diplomatic relations and peace between the two communities. And this would have settled the fears of the crown and appeased them to continue funding the American experiment. In this way, John Rolfe, amassed a tobacco empire.

And then in 1617 Pocahontas dies. The Mattaponi think that Pocahontas was murdered possibly, by Rolfe and other conspirators. She would never return to her American homeland again. Never see her family again. Never participate in her way of life again. She was laid to rest in England, not even on her sacred land. She will forever be known as America's first tragic heroine.

Martin Luther King Jr. - Conquering Fear

On September 20, 1958 a 29-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Blumstein’s department store in Harlem and I wonder if he realized that 24 years earlier, at Blumstein’s, it was the site of ground zero for a civil rights struggle similar to his own. In 1934 it was the place where the 'Buy Where You Can Work' campaign was going on. 75% of Blumstein store sales were to Black people. Yet they couldn't work as clerks or cashiers there. Now thousands protested. Needless to say they hired Black people soon after that.

So here sat King at this very same store signing copies of his book, Stride Toward Freedom. The book in all its detail was King's intimate account of how he himself and 50,000 others fought for civil rights with non-violent resistance and in 1955 how they staged the surprisingly successful Montgomery bus boycott. I still can't contain my fascination with the irony here that he now sat in a store that was boycotted for the very same thing that he boycotted for. Stop short on that interesting fact because there's a bigger reason that King's book signing wouldn't go as planned.

It was organized to be a light-hearted event. It's a book signing. One where he could kind of just relax for a minute from all of the civil rights struggles and engage with new readers and greet his fans and admirers. It would take a dark turn. As King was greeting and signing books an unassuming 42 year old woman approached him. She was wearing a smart suit, cat glasses, a necklace and earrings, and she was carrying a large black handbag. And she asked, 'are you Martin Luther King?' When he replied yes. She said, "you've been annoying me for a long time." Then she plunged a letter opener deep into his chest. This woman was later identified as Izola Curry, originally from Georgia, she had moved to New York for work.

Not much is known about her but she was later found to be schizophrenic. And she had thought for a long time that King and the NAACP had her under constant surveillance. She thought that they were her enemies. The pictures of Curry in the New York Daily News shocked me. She was deeply disturbed in her facial expressions, but by her appearance, I never would've even thought that she could murder anybody. She just looked like this unassuming, nice, slightly over a middle aged Black woman who was on her way to church. Not someone who is on the way to jail for attempted murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now I can't begin to imagine what it's like to be stabbed but I've read accounts where people say they felt nothing at all, mostly from shock and adrenaline. And then the accounts also range to things like they felt every single millimeter of the steel entering their body and this painful experience. Police arrived on the scene to find King sitting in a chair. He was stunned and he had the letter openers' ivory handle still protruding just below his collar. He was rushed to the hospital and surgeons opened his chest and after a dangerous operation, completed just inches from his heart, he survived. And King says about it, "when I was well enough to talk with Dr. Aubre Maynard, the Chief of the Surgeons who performed the delicate, dangerous operation, I learned the reason for the long delay that proceeded the surgery.

He told me that the razor tip of the instrument had been touching my aorta and that my whole chest had to be open to extract it," "'if you had sneezed during all those hours of waiting, Dr. Maynard said your aorta would have been punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood.'" Curry would spend the rest of her life in mental institutions for the attempted murder of King. Dying only in 2015 and she's largely lost to history. King, in typical King fashion that we may take for granted now, he quickly let the offense go. He says to the surprise of many that he forgave Curry.

Now it's difficult for most of us to imagine this kind of letting go. And I think our natural reaction to getting stabbed would be resentment, right? Payback. Like that James Brown song Payback. That song is popular for a reason. That's how most of us think. But you have to imagine the moral fortitude, the courage, all of these things that will be needed to let go of these very powerful, emotional feelings that you would have towards someone if they stabbed you. And then to make that determination that forgiveness is the appropriate attitude to take. King did this. His philosophy of love allowed him to bypass the bitterness, the anger, the hate, the resentment that would have tormented many of us.

King regularly stood up to death with the firmest footing and with this profound sense of forgiveness. So I think that he is someone who was highly qualified to counsel others on overcoming fear. That is going to be the topic of today's program. Dr. King on overcoming fear. Welcome to The Humanity Archive where we explore the past, inform our present, looking at humanity's best and sometimes even our worst examples to see how we can situate ourselves in the now and move forward to a better and brighter future.

We don't just look at history as a static rock but an ever flowing presence in our daily lives and a way for us to move forward. I'm Jermaine Fowler and I feel so magnificent to be sitting here and talking to you right now on our topic for today, this idea of acknowledging and facing fear. I got the idea for this show when I was reading Martin Luther King, Jr.'s book, A Gift of Love. And who to put it better then the person who wrote the forward to the book, a Reverend by the name of Dr.

Raphael G. Warnock. And he says, "As Dr. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in 1962, having been arrested for holding a prayer vigil outside of Albany City Hall. King and Ralph Abernathy shared a jail cell for 15 days. That was, according to King, "dirty, filthy, and ill equipped, and the worst I'd ever seen." "While behind bars he spent uninterrupted time preparing the drafts for classic sermons, such as loving your enemies, love and action, and shattered dreams, and continued to work on the volume after his release."

Arrested for holding a prayer vigil. If that doesn't jump out to you, I don't know what will. But in his book King talks about it a lot. But the section on antidotes for fear jumped out at me because I've often wondered why 40 million Americans suffer from some anxiety disorder. Like why are we afraid? OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), phobias, stress, and so on and so forth. I've heard a theory that says as we shift more and more to a status seeking, money motivated, material driven society consumer culture, all of these things cause our anxiety to increase.

But when we focus on community, family, a meaningful philosophy our anxiety decreases. So there's a correlation there. So as I was reading this, I saw where King guides readers on four steps to overcoming fear. I think that's something that will be helpful to many in the audience, helpful to me, something that I try to incorporate into my daily philosophy. Again, here we try not to only look at history like it's a movie, but to see how we can use history, philosophy, thoughts, and help them to inform our actions in the present. And I know King is somebody who was greatly admired, but I don't hear many people talk about his thoughts much, his philosophy much or his worldview much.

And that's kind of what we're going to do here. We're going to look a little bit more into the man and his philosophy for life. So again, he guides readers on the first step to overcoming fear. And he says, "first we must unflinchingly face our fears and honestly ask ourselves, why are we afraid? This confrontation will, to some measure, grant us power. We shall never be cured of fear by escapism or repression. For the more we attempt to ignore and repress our fears the more we multiply our inner conflicts. By looking squarely and honestly at our fears, we learn that many of them reside in some childhood need or apprehension by bringing our fears to the forefront of consciousness we may find them to be more imaginary than real.

Some of them will turn out to be snakes under the carpet." That was a man under relentless attack by segregationists, white supremacists and at times those of his own race. Dr. Martin Luther King embodied courage under fire as someone who had acknowledged real fears. At one point in time he was savagely punched and kicked by a white man when he was angry about him registering as the first Black guest of a historic Alabama hotel. Did he respond with the strength of love? Another instance, he was marching in Chicago. He was swarmed by about 700 white protesters, hurling bricks, and bottles and rocks at him. And he was struck in the head. He fell nearly unconscious.

There is a picture of it. You can find online right now. Then he regained his composure and he courageously continued to lead the protest with a resolute nerve. Imagine marching through a sea of fury and hate. People threatening real anti-black violence at even the mere thought of economic empowerment for Black people. This is what he had went there to contribute to, the very thought of desegregation. King said, "I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, a mob as hateful as I've seen here in Chicago." A lot of people like to think of the North as a more liberal part of the country, not so much so in King's eyes.

He took off his tie and he promised to keep demonstrating. Then he said, "yes, it is definitely a closed society. We're going to make it an open society." Talking of the separation that he saw between the races in Chicago. Talking of the lack of opportunity that he saw for Black people in Chicago. Talking of the lack of upward mobility of the Black people that he saw in Chicago. He said he is going to make it open for them. This was his dream and vision there. And there's many of these instances of King facing fear in which he would have had to acknowledge his fear. Years earlier his house was bombed in 1956 and it detonated on the porch of his home in Montgomery, Alabama, and his wife Coretta was inside.

No one was hurt but imagine the type of fear after something like this that could be so debilitating. At the time he was 10 weeks into leading a bus boycott, one that his enemies vowed to crush. Yet not even this downed his spirit. Now try to think about what he was up against. To look death in the face like this. To go up to organizations like one called The Anti Negro White Citizens Council. Imagine The Anti Negro White Citizens Council. This was a group of the mayor and the police chief and all of these government officials were a part of this group openly. Imagine the courage to go up against this type of enemy.

And that gets into his second point that courage is always necessary whenever you want to face fear. Like all of us, I'm sure King, he had to have an inward struggle with fear. Nobody is fearless unless you're a sociopath or a psychopath or someone with no feeling. But even if he had this fear inside, outwardly he seemed steadfast. He seemed unmoved. He seemed ready to face an overwhelming hate in America. And in this spirit he considers as a second way that we can deal with this fear and it is through courage. He says, "we can master fear through one of the supreme virtues known to man, courage.

Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear. Unlike anxiety, fear has a definite object which may be faced, analyzed, attacked and if need be endured. Courage, the determination to not be overwhelmed by an object, however frightful, enables us to stand up to any fear. Many of our fears are not mere snakes under the carpet. Trouble is a reality in the strange medley of life. Dangers lurk within the circumference of every action. Accidents do occur. Bad health is an ever-threatening possibility. And death is a stark, grim and inevitable fact of human experience. Courage is a resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations.

Cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance. Courageous men never lose the zest for living, even though their life is zestless. Cowardly men overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear." Think of those three solid examples that I just gave you of King facing his fears and living the advice that he is giving us himself. I imagine many of you face your own set of fears daily.

Some more challenging than others. And I challenge you to remember this next time you face your next set of challenges and fears. To build up the dyke of courage against a flood of fears as King says. Now the next point is that love is stronger. And he acknowledges that fear has many manifestations, right? Inward ones such as jealousy, hate, self-loathing, and depression, as well as outward ones such as segregation, human persecution, and war. With ongoing fear of death threats to his family, he admitted that he was tempted to carry a firearm.

Think about Martin Luther King pistol packing, toting a gun. Could anybody have blamed him if he did do this? I don't think so, but he knew it was against his nonviolent philosophy. He firmly asserted that the only counter to these fears was love even when much of America hated him. I don't know if you've heard, but King wasn't as popular in his time as he is now, but he always maintained that even his detractors were his brothers and his sisters. He never let the extreme hate separate him from his belief that peaceful assertiveness was the only means to social change. Love at the foundation of his every action. Love causing him to criticize but not demonize.

Love causing him to shed tears but not let those tears turn into a rage filled anger. Love at the basis of his conquering of fear. He says, "fear is mastered through love. Hate is rooted in fear. And the only cure for fear and hate is love. Is not fear one of the major causes of war? We say that war is a consequence of hate, but close scrutiny reveals this sequence. First fear, then hate, then war and finally deeper hatred. We are afraid of the superiority of other people, of failure, and of scorn, and disapproval of those opinions.

So we most value envy, jealousy, a lack of self-confidence, a feeling of insecurity and a haunting sense of inferiority are all rooted in fear. Is there a cure for these annoying theories that pervert our personal lives? Yes. A deep and abiding commitment to the way of love. Perfect love casts out fear, hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that." I once heard someone say that, imagine if the people of the Civil Rights Movement let their anger take hold. Let their outrage take hold. Let their bitterness take hold.

Let their resentment take hold. Picked up firearms. Let there resentment continue to be fueled. If this were to happen we may have a Black Al Qaeda in America. Terrorist cells everywhere in a continuous war against the American government. This didn't happen. It's due in part to this resounding principle of love that flowed throughout the movement. This ability to take that resentment and make a different decision about it. Let that resentment bathe in the bath of love and then come forward as critical examination of America in a steadfast commitment to dialog, to protests, to boycott, to these other means that would affect change.

Imagine if those of the Civil Rights Movement would have done otherwise. America would not be the same as it is today. Now Martin Luther King, as we know, was a religious leader and he was someone with robust faith. He had a religious zeal and unflinching commitment to revolutionary Christianity. These are parts of King that are entrenched in his legacy and in his personality and in his movement. As a Baptist minister, he fought racism through a mixture of scripture and a hyper-social consciousness. And it's no wonder that his final antidote for fear is faith.

And secular or non-secular, religious or non-religious, I think this idea can be applied to anyone. He isn't really talking about a blind uncritical faith. I don't think he is talking about that. He's talking about an acknowledgement of letting whatever your source of good, whether it be spiritual or philosophical, or even the love of your family be the wind at your back. With this idea that humans need faith that comes through spirituality he writes, "fear is mastered through faith. A common source of fear is an awareness of deficient resources in the consequent inadequacy for life. Abnormal fears and phobias that are expressed in neurotic anxiety may be cured by psychiatry, but the fear of death, non being and nothingness expressed in existential anxiety may be cured only by a positive religious faith.

A positive religious faith does not offer an illusion that we shall be exempt from pain and suffering, nor does it imbue us with the idea that life has a drama of a unalloyed comfort and untroubled ease. Rather it instills us with the inner equilibrium needed to face strains, burdens, and fears that inevitably come, and assures us that the universe is trustworthy and a God is concerned. Religion endows us with the conviction that we are not alone in this vast uncertain universe beneath and above the shifting sands of time. The uncertainties that darken our days and the vicissitudes that cloud our nights as a wise and loving God. That above the manyness of times stands the one eternal God with wisdom to guide us, strength to protect us, and love to keep us."

Though it almost seems blasphemous even mentioning the word of God in any form in today's times in this technological, scientific era that we live in, most people favor the intellectual over the spiritual these days. I think this has been the reality throughout history. This is ebbing and flowing between the rational versus the spiritual, but at any rate King, he believed in God. And he thought that this religious faith was such an important part of facing fear that he read his Bible daily, preach sermons, committed his life to Christianity as a way of mitigating his fears.

And it brings me to the question, who do you believe in? Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Buddha? Do you believe in Mohammed? Whoever you believe in or even if it's just in a common good or your family, King is saying that this faith can help you overcome fear. Now, certainly we will never fully eradicate our fear, nor should we. It is a nature given response. It heightens our awareness. It helps us stay alive in dangerous situations. But the question then becomes is our fear paralyzing us or is it motivating us? I think that those deemed the greatest people in human history faced fear head-on.

They kept it at bay. And in Martin Luther King's case, they conquered it. And his book, A Gift of Love is a magnificent read in its entirety but the section on facing fear is a call to each and every one of us to live a life of courage and a life of fulfillment that we can only have if we face our fears.

American Martyr: The Story of Crispus Attucks

On a cold night in March of 1770 on King street in Boston, Massachusetts, a street brawl was brewing that would become one of the bloodiest slaughters in American history. For years, Boston colonists grew more and more discontent with the unfair treatment of the Royal British crown in Europe. With its 4,000 soldiers in a city with only 17,000 citizens, the military presence was... we'll just say, it was intense. Perhaps Britain thought if colonists couldn't be content, intimidation would work just as well.

Military occupations are always a strange state of affairs. I mean imagine soldiers surrounding your house. Sitting in the gray area between war and peace, occupations are also somewhere between conflict and resolution. Not quite either way, kind of see-sawing and tipping toward either side. For the colonists to look out their window daily and see these British troops, it caused a deeply hostile frustration. So that night, a riotous group of Bostonian dock workers led by Crispus Attucks made their way to the customs house. This was where King George's money was stored and there stood a single private.

His name was Hugh White and he was the only guard there. He may or may not have been surprised because large raucous groups approached him all the time. I mean, again, this was a situation where the soldiers were used to colonists being rowdy and hurling insults and everything else at them. Maybe he sensed something was different. This group wouldn't relent. They hurled insults. They threatened violence. Their voices grew from isolated insults to angry yells. Some of them are inches away. In all the commotion White cracks a colonist in the head with the butt of his rifle. They retaliate. Pelting him with tightly packed snowballs.

The town bells rang out, which were normally reserved for fires, but this time, it was a different emergency. More colonists rush out to view the spectacle. White panics and calls for reinforcements. Here comes captain Thomas Preston arriving with six other soldiers and they take up defensive positions with White. They shouldered their muskets along with the heavy burden that any soldier would feel who has to make a momentary life or death decision. There are all these colonists and they're armed with the sticks and clubs and cutlasses, and they're making threats and they're grabbing at the soldier's weapons. "Come on, you bloody backs.

You lobster scoundrels. Fire if you dare!" And then Crispus Attucks lunges forward. Some yell hold your fire. Then six or seven shots crack the night air like the sound of a leather whip snapping under a fast hand. When the smoke clears, there are five colonists dead. Six wounded and Crispus Attucks was among the first to die. In what some say was the first shots fired for the American revolution.

Welcome to The Humanity Archive where we fuse the historical, the philosophical, the intellectual, the curious. All in an attempt to navigate the past, archiving humanity to see how we can impact the present. I am your gracious host Jermaine Fowler. And today we're going to be talking about Crispus Attucks. Crispus Attucks will forever be known as the first casualty in the American revolution. Symbolized as a martyr, glorified as a patriot and held up as a standard for citizenship and sacrifice.

Ironic because, well, these are attributes that I don't often hear associated with a Black man born in the 18th century. What we don't know about Crispus Attucks, well, we don't know a lot, so I guess we should talk about a few things that we do know. His life story is unfinished. Kind of like one of those masterpieces. There's one by Leonardo DaVinci and it's like a half painted unfinished work. Wow! I wonder what that would look like completed. Well, that's kind of how Crispus Attucks' life is. We have bits and pieces and we're just going to fill in what we can based on the sources and the evidence that we have. And then at the end you draw your own conclusions about the man, his life and his legacy.

Some historians say that his father was descended from Africa and his mother of an Eastern Woodland Native American tribe. A lot of what we know about Attucks is from an escaped slave ad, as sad as that is and depressing as that is, that is a key piece of evidence that we have about his life, his description and who he was. And the ad says, "Ran away from his master William Brown of Farmingham on the 30th of September. A mulatto fellow, about 27 years of age named Crispus

Six feet, two inches high, short curled hair, his knees nearer together than common. Had on a light colored bearskin coat, plain brown fustian jacket or brown all wool one. New buckskin, breeches, blue yarn stockings and a check'd woolen shirt. Whoever shall take up said runaway and convey him to his above said master shall have ten pounds, old tenor reward, and all necessary charges paid. And all masters of vessels and others are hereby cautioned against concealing or carrying off said servant on penalty of law."

So there's a lot to unpack there. This isn't just a description of a man's clothing for a fashion line, when they talk about his bearskin coat and his buckskin breeches, right? This is an ominous ad to recapture, re-enslave, a man who ran away for his freedom. Before anything about liberating America for the revolution. If you will, before any of that, he decided to liberate himself. Free himself from slavery. An act of courage that he just took off, ran and got the hell out of the terrible situation that he found himself in. During the time that this was written, a lot of freed or escaped slaves would work at the docks.

They would work on a ship. That's why there's this part on the ad where it's cautioning vessels from harboring him saying, there'll be a penalty for this because that's probably where they expected him to go. Just for another reference, ten pounds today would have been about $2,300. A lot of people made a living out of tracking, hunting and capturing escaped slaves like animals. I often try to think about history in modern terms as well. And imagine if someone bought an ad and you saw that pop up in your Facebook and it was for the capture and return of a slave. Imagine how appalled we would be in the 21st century.

It'd be insane! This couldn't happen. This is mind boggling. Like you can't even fathom it. Sometimes it's very difficult to apply historical thinking to today when it comes to the things that we see as absolutely immoral and absolutely unfathomable in today's times. I thought that was interesting, but again, we don't know much else about Attucks. So again, we'll keep filling the gaps in. But we do know a lot about his legacy though. Imagine, he's said to be the first person to die for the American revolution. So imagine the feelings, whether it be of patriotism or whatever else that's going to swell, especially in African-Americans.

And it actually has and did. Now think about the abolitionists during that time. Those who wanted to free slaves. Well, they used his memory. They used his image to push for their cause. And then you go on into the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 70s, and they wrapped up his memory in the cape of universal freedom and civil liberty and they proudly proclaim that he was the first African-American to die for America. Almost as though his life was some evergreen example that, hey, we've always fought since the beginning. We fought for America. How dare you deny us our rights, our liberties, when we fought for the liberty of America.

So you can see how historical figures can be used and wrapped up and packaged in a way to push forward the agenda of whoever it is who was taking that person and using them. One person who did this was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and he says, "He is one of the most important figures in African-American history. Not for what he did for his own race but what he did for all oppressed people everywhere. He is a reminder that the African-American heritage is not only African but American. And it is a heritage that begins with the beginning of America."

And I thought it was interesting then to contrast this with someone who had a bit different look, perspective, and outtake, and this was a man by the name of Stokely Carmichael. He uses Attucks as well in one of his speeches and one of his lectures. This was a man who was not part of the Civil Rights Movement, as Martin Luther King sought, he was part of the Black Power Movement. A constituent of the Black Panthers and those people who were, we'll say militant, versus non-violent. So he says that Crispus Attucks was a fool. He was a sell out. He fought for a country that would reduce him to a slave.

I mean, are you serious? This was his take. And in a speech in 1967, he says, "The very first man to die for the war of independence in this country was a Black man named Crispus Attucks. The very first man, yes!" He gets an applause after this. He's in a crowded auditorium. He said "He was a fool yeah! He died for white folk country while the rest of his Black brothers were enslaved in this country. He should have been fighting white folk instead of dying for white folk. But that's been our history as black people. We've always been dying for white folk." So I thought it was very interesting to contrast these two views.

Let you see how the historical legacy of a person can be used or whoever is the one speaking about him is going to put their own perspective on it. What I see from this is that history is kind of like clay, and that can be molded, reshaped, reformed by new potters, every generation or within the same generation, molded, reshaped, reconfigured, re-conformed to a political movement. That is something very interesting to take note of and realize that that's a use or some people may say abuse of history, depending on which angle you look at. When people take historical figures and bend them to whatever agenda that they are trying to propose, use them as evidence for whatever agenda.

Doesn't just happen here. You can be the judge as I always like to say at the end of this. Whether you think Attucks was a freedom fighter and that he was an example to be followed, or whether he was a sellout or somewhere in between. So going back to the main story. You have tensions rising and as you can imagine things weren't going well in the years leading up to the Boston Massacre. This didn't just happen in a vacuum. This didn't just happen out of nowhere. Things brought it forward. So enough colonists had hated the imperial army, military occupation that they clashed with them regularly.

And wouldn't it foster some bad blood and some bad feelings if some foreigner was in your backyard with guns and their presence was just there, just always there. Imagine the tension. And I mean, this happens today with military outposts. Last I checked America has some 800 military bases around the world. So you can imagine the tension that causes within the local populations. A lot of them probably don't want them there. And the same thing with Britain. Here in America, they were unwanted by a great many. And there were a lot of clashes.

A lot of skirmishes. They were imposing what many thought were unfair taxes. And even greater, there were these impressment gangs. And this is where, to put it briefly, the British Naval Force just snatched up Americans on the docks and forced them to work for the British Imperial Naval ships. They needed some labor. They needed some men. We are just going to go and take some American labor. So they had these groups called impressment gangs. And there's really a lot of instances that are documented where they would just go kidnap people, basically.

Kidnap men, kidnap boys, kidnap youth and force them to work in labor for the British Naval vessels. So this really caused a very, very, very deep resentment with even the working class Americans with the British, as well as the wealthy who had their grievances as well with the taxes and everybody was on edge. We hear these impressment gangs, again, this was a legal practice, they forced this labor. These are wild times that we are living in. I mean there are gangs of men running around with clubs and knives and cutlasses, and many are assaulting soldiers and they're being kidnapped and forced into labor and there's civil disobedience going on all the time.

Boston is ground zero for revolution. And in 1675, there was a major riot. A kid named Christopher Cider was shot above the eye. He was killed. He was only 11 years old. Colonists against British loyalists because there were people in Boston at the time who were loyal to the British. People were disloyal, didn't like them. So that adds a whole other element to it. And they shattered the glass of the store. This is how it happened. The kid was shot for basically throwing a rock. So 5,000 Bostonians attend this kid's funeral.

It was paid for by none other than the very famous Samuel Adams. His death was used as propaganda to push for the patriotic cause and Attucks was a part of this world. There's no way that he wouldn't have seen this, heard this and been a part of this. So he was aware of the freedom and liberty talk I'm sure. And it may not be a stretch to say that he bought into it. And this led to his last fateful day. We can't say for sure, but it would make some sense that he was involved with this. And these could have been his thoughts and many have ascribed these thoughts to him as being a part of the patriotism and the revolutionary ideology and thought and action toward the British during this time.

Then we come to the day of the massacre. We have many firsthand accounts that can give us some insight into what happened that day. But first we have Benjamin Burdick. And again, just remember, this is the Boston Massacre. One you probably heard about in school. This is revolutionary times. This is British soldiers versus colonists. And this is one of their very first major, major clashes where shots are fired. People die. And many say that this is the pivotal moment that will swing the wrecking ball through the relationship with Great Britain in the newly forming America.

So Benjamin Burdick, he is an American. So think about this from an American perspective, by hearing his side of it. This is during a trial because the British soldiers, they did kill Americans. They were taken to trial, and these are the testimonies of the people who were there. So Benjamin Burdick says, "When I came in to King Street about nine o'clock, I saw the soldiers around the centinel. I asked one if he was loaded and he said, 'yes.' I asked him if he would fire, he said 'yes, by the eternal God' and pushed his bayonet at me. After the firing, the captain came before the soldiers and put up their guns with his arms and said, 'stop firing.

Don't fire. No more. Don't fire again.' I heard the word fire and am certain that it came from behind the soldiers. I saw a man passing busily behind who I took to be an officer. The firing was a little time after. I saw some persons fall before the firing. I saw a stick thrown at the soldiers. The word fire I took to be a word of command. I had in my hand the Highland broad sword, which I brought from home. Upon my coming out, I was told it was a rangle between the soldier's and the people. Upon that, I went back and got my sword. I never used to go out with a weapon. I had not my sword drawn till after the soldier pushed his bayonet at me.

I should have cut his head off if he had stepped out of his rank to attack me again. At the first firing, the people were chiefly in Royal Exchange Lane. There being about fifty in the street. After the firing, I went up to the soldiers and told them I wanted to see some faces that I might swear to them another day. The centinel in a melancholy tone said, perhaps, sir, you may." So again, this is the testimony of a colonist. You have a look at this like a lawyer, you're trying a case. So you have the different sides, different testimony from each side of the stand.

You have the defendants which are the British soldiers, Hugh White being one of them. And then you have the victim's or the plaintiffs, the accusers, whatever you would like to call them, which is the American colonists, their families, the dead, deceased Crispus Attucks being one of them. So now we get another testimony. And this is from the other side. This is from Captain Thomas Preston. He was the British soldier who arrived at the scene to offer backup to Hugh White.

So let's see what he has to say. Remember, he kind of comes in after the violence is supposedly already started. After the rockets and the ruckus start with these rowdy colonists. Almost they would make it seem drunkenly just coming upon Hugh White, who was just kind of standing there and just kind of at his post for the night. Here's what Thomas Preston has to say about the incident. "The mob still increased and more outrageous striking their clubs or bludgeons one against another and calling out, 'come on, you rascals!

You bloody backs! You lobster scoundrels! Fire if you dare, God damn you! Fire and be damned! We know you dare not. And much more such language was used. At this time I was between the soldier's and the mob, parlaying with and endeavoring all in my power to persuade them to retire peaceably, but to no purpose. They, the civilians, advanced to the points of the bayonets. Struck some of them and even the muzzles of the pieces and seemed to be endeavoring to close with the soldiers. On which some well behaved persons asked me if the guns were charged. I replied, 'yes'. They then asked me if I intended to order the men to fire.

I answered, 'No. By no means.' Observing to them that I was advanced before the muzzles of the men's pieces and must fall a sacrifice if they fired. That the soldiers were upon the half cock and charged bayonets and my giving the word fire under those circumstances would prove me to be no officer. While I was thus speaking, one of the soldiers having received a severe blow with a stick, stepped a little to one side and instantly fired. On this as a general attack was made on the men by a great number of heavy clubs and snowballs being thrown at them, by which all of our lives were in imminent danger.

Some persons at the same time from behind calling out, 'damn you bloods! Why don't you fire?' Instantly three or four of the soldiers fired. On my asking the soldiers why they fired without an order, they said they heard the word fire and supposed it came from me. This might be the case as many of the mob called out, 'Fire! Fire!' But I assured the men that I gave no such order. That my words were, 'Don't fire. Stop your fire!" Immediately the word that sticks out to me in Captain Preston's defense is imminent danger because if they are using the defense of self-defense, then you have to feel as though your life is threatened.

You have to fear death and imminent danger to be able to plead self-defense. So when he says that these crazily obnoxious, rowdy, violent, blood thirsty colonists were throwing snowballs, pelting them, they're grabbing their guns. They have swords on them, which was confirmed by the testimony of one of the colonists. They had weapons. Might not have been firearms, but weapons, nonetheless, weapons that can kill you. A sword can kill you. A club can kill. Heck, enough snowballs thrown at you could kill you. And if they were in Boston, I'm sure those snowballs were very hardly packed. It gets cold up there.

This is his side. They were in imminent danger. And then on the other side, so far, we have the colonists who were saying they felt threatened. They felt in danger. So again, two sides. This would have been the case of the century. This was the case of the century in America. The suspense. The tension. These two nations clashing against each other. This was the microcosm of the macro foreign relations between Britain and the United States. And this clash would send a shockwave over the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Great Britain.

So now we see someone else enter the story. Another famous player. If this was a movie and there was a list of actors, this next person would be like seeing Brad Pitt in the credits. His name was John Adams. A man who would be President of the United States later down the line. But at this point he is a person who was going to defend, yes, I did say defend. I will say one more time, defend. He was a lawyer for the British soldiers. Why? We don't know. The stories that I've read said that John Adams wasn't a loyalist.

He was not beholden to, loyal to, or in any way sympathetic with the British to where he would do this for that reason. But maybe he thought that, hey, there will be some severe retaliation if the soldiers don't get a fair trial. So maybe he was looking out for the best interest of America in his own way. From what I can tell, we don't know. His testimony, it's interesting to say the least. Again he has a unique perspective because he's an American defending the soldiers.

So his perspective would be one that is trying to get them this manslaughter plea, or the self-defense defense. He's trying to get them off from this, to not be hung or spend time in prison. So would they be proven innocent or would they be proven guilty? Did the colonists act in a legitimate claim to fight, or was this just some disastrous night out where they picked the wrong fight and ended up getting killed as a result of it? So John Adams makes his arguments and in them, he takes direct aim at Crispus Attucks.

And I can only describe the language that he uses, the tone of him looking at Attucks as some like Black buck stereotype. This man was seen as this irredeemably violent man who refused to bend to white authority, who led this mob. And he is the key sole reason for the violence tonight. Who would not have fired on this crazy Black man enraged and coming at them? John Adams says, "when the multitude was shouting and huzzaing and threatening life, the bells all ringing, the mob, whistle, screaming and rending like in an Indian yell, the people from all quarters throwing every species of rubbish they could pick up in the street.

And some who were quite on the other side of the street, throwing clubs at the whole party, Montgomery, in particular, smote with the club knocked down, and as soon as he could rise and take up his firelock, another club from afar has struck his breast or shoulder. What could he do? Do you expect that he should behave like a stoic philosopher lost in apathy? Patient is Epictetus while his master was breaking his legs with a cudgel? It is impossible you should find him guilty of murder. You must suppose him divested of all human passions if you do not think him at the least provoked, thrown off his guard and into the furor brevis, by such treatment as this.

Bailey saw the mulatto seven or eight minutes before the firing at the head of 20 or 30 sailors in Corn Hill. And he had a large cordwood stick so that this Attucks, by this testimony of Bailey compared with that of Andrew, and some others appears to have undertaken to be the hero of the night, and to lead this army with banners, to form them in the first place in Dock Square, and march them to King Street with their clubs. They pass through the main street, up to the main guard in order to make the attack. If this was not an unlawful assembly, there never was one in the world. Attucks with his myrmidons comes around Jackson's corner and down to the party by the Sentry box, when the soldiers pushed the people off, this man with his party cried, 'Do not be afraid of them.

They dare not fire. Kill them! Kill them! Knock them over!' And he tried to knock their brains out. It is plain the soldiers did not leave their station, but cried to the people, 'stand off!' Now to have this reinforcement coming down under the command of a stout mulatto fellow, who his very looks was enough to terrify any person. What had not the soldiers then to fear? And with one hand took hold of a bayonet and with the other knocked the man down. This was the behavior of Attucks, to whose mad behavior in all probability, the dreadful carnage of that night is chiefly to be ascribed.' Wow!

He pulls no prejudice punch because he is squarely placing the blame on Attucks. It wasn't the rest of the colonists. The spotlight is shining down on Attucks as the aggressor, as the person who started it. He is the person who should be on trial if not for him being dead. And this is the take that Adams has. So Adams is often praised as this progressive in his era because he is one of the founding fathers who never owned slaves. So it's a strange irony that he directly blames Attucks for all of this.

And not only does he blame Attucks, but he brings in this racist prejudice kind of language where he is saying who wouldn't be afraid of this tall Black or a mulatto person? Anybody would have fired on him if he was coming at them mad. So I couldn't help but see this in his language and reading his arguments, Attucks was made a scapegoat by him. So at the end of all this, the jury acquitted the six soldiers, including Hugh White, never found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter and they escaped the death penalty.

This is the story. This is the story of Crispus Attucks. There are some people who think he was the first to die for a revolution. Some people think that he should not have been there at all. That he should have been trying to meet his own ends, favoring other Black enslaved people, or maybe he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, or maybe he joined in with the wrong group and he didn't have any patriotism in his heart at all. He didn't have anything in his heart at all, other than just being with the group of dock workers and joining in with the ruckus and the fervor that was going on during that time and the rise of anger against the British troops for its own sake and not for anything revolutionary.

We may never know. But we do know that firsts are significant. Everyone loves firsts, right? Your firstborn. Your first love. Your first car. Crispus Attucks will forever be known as the first to die in what became the Revolutionary War. Was he a patriot? Was he challenging the British soldiers for the liberation of the colonies? We may never know, but we do know that he had to value freedom because he ran away for his own freedom. So it may not be too far-fetched to think that he saw a common bond between the liberation of Black people and the liberation of the colonies from British rule. We do know he was a major figure in American folklore, praised for his heroism.

His death is seen as a challenge to imperialism and to oppression.

Hokusai: The Mad Painter

There is a big difference between doing what you want and what you must. In the year 1760 on the isolated island nation of Japan, a 26 year old Katsushika Hokusai was broke and desperate and struggling, and he was an artist. As a matter of fact, what other kind of artist is there? This is before he was world famous. Before he painted the Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Before he was imitated by artists like Vincent van Gogh. Before his artistic genius was ever noticed, he was a street peddler, a hustler, selling everything from spices to almanacs.

Just a man trying to support his family. Sometimes we do what we must. Welcome to The Humanity Archive, where we fuse the historical and the philosophical. Exploring the past. Informing the present. Digging through humanities archives for examples of our greatest achievements, our biggest failures, all to help us today.

I'm Jermaine Fowler. Let's get into it. Katsushika Hokusai. Probably not one of the most famous people to ever live, but someone who speaks to me probably because of his famous painting. It is called the Great Wave Off Kanagawa. We'll just call it the Great Wave as it's also commonly known. This was painted by him around 1830 and this painting reminds me that everything is a matter of perspective. You see, in the painting there are these men and they're in these boats and this wave is towering up over them.

It looks like it's about to just crash down and crush them, destroy them, and take them away from everything they've ever known. Kinda looks like claws about to just snap them up, but then you see ever so faintly in the background is Mount Fuji, which is normally the biggest, the tallest, the grandest thing in any frame. 12,300 and some odd feet mountain. Usually this is the end-all, be-all. It is the focal point. But to these boaters the wave was Mount Fuji. Fuji is a volcano, but the wave was an active, destructive, watery volcano about to crash down on them.

And so again, it reminds me that everything is a matter of perspective. That's why I love that painting. And that's why it's one of my favorite paintings. So it made me decide to look a little bit more into the life of the man who painted it. Katsushika Hokusai born in 1760 in Edo, which is now known as Tokyo. He died in the same place in Edo, or Tokyo, in 1849. And he'll be forever known as this master artist and printmaker of the Yukio style. Yukio, meaning pictures of the floating world. So going back to 1760, again Hokusai, as a young man, 26, and he has the pressing responsibility of supporting a family.

And what's he going to do? His dreams actually nearly died at the cruel hands of necessity. You have babies to feed. You have a wife to take care of and run a household with. I'm sure many of you can relate to the sacrifices that you have to make in a situation such as this. Your dreams might fade away at what you have to do. And not to say there isn't any joy in raising a family, however, we all have dreams and things that we want to attain, but we have to make a noble choice to give those up. So when he wasn't selling in the market, he was still trying to sneak in and steal away moments to paint and to illustrate and to fulfill his dream of being this painter.

So he used every free second to keep his dream alive. He worked and he pursued and he transformed into this brilliant painter over time because he didn't give up. As I look at his life and his life's work, I see this as a man who emptied his soul on canvas. He created works that were gripping. They were rousing and beautifully structured and they exploded with this energy and this volume. I always see the artist as the vanguards of freedom because in this very, very strict social structure, this class structure in Japan at the time, what other outlet is there to express yourself then through the arts?

And you can almost look at the class structure as a rock, right? And the arts as water. And if you know anything about water, you know that water will find a way, travel and find cracks and crevices. So the human spirit is just like that. I think the human spirit being like water, it is going to find a way to express itself no matter what. No matter what obstacle. No matter what thing that tries to impede it. So we have to assume if Hokusai was a man of many words, he didn't write very many of them down. Because we don't have much on record from him.

Not very many quotes. No journals. Not even very many quotes about him from other people of the time period. But there is a couple. I'm going to read one to you. Give you a little bit of insight about the man and who he was. He says, "From the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the form of things. By the time I was 50, I had published an infinity of designs, but nothing I did before the age of 70 was worthy of attention. At 73, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow.

If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am 86. So that by 90 I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At 100, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them while at 130, 40 or more, I will have reached the stage where every dot, every stroke I paint will be alive. May heaven that grants long life give you the chance to prove that this is no lie." Wow! That's why I think the running theme of all of this is patience and hard work.

Pursuit of happiness. Pursuit of perfection. Even though we may never reach it. But Hokusai, he is saying I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to keep pursuing, endeavoring, putting forth effort to become better and better and better to the point that my painting is heavenly. That it's otherworldly. That it's existential, spiritual, put my whole soul, being, self into my artwork. That is what this is saying to me. That's how this quote speaks to me. We see the result, right? I mean, world renowned artists are transcending time.

Transcending space. Spirit of artistic perfection ends up paying off for him because low and behold he gets a well-paid commission. I think it was to paint a flag. Somebody saw his artwork. They liked it enough to say, hey, I'm going to pay you for this. I would like to pay you to paint this flag. Maybe not what he wanted to paint, but hey, he's getting paid now. So he's able to bring some support into his family, through his love, through his passion, through his artwork. After years, he's finally earning from it. To earn a living as an artist in feudal Japan was damned hard. If you have a family it's even harder.

So we fast forward into the spring of 1804 and he's, again, rewarded in an unexpected way. He's at this festival in Tokyo and he walks into the midst of a large crowd. I'm not sure where exactly he gets this idea, but he unrolls a 20 yard piece of parchment paper. Then he gathers buckets of water and ink and mops and brooms, and he's ready for a spectacle. He grabs the mop and then he dips it into the pigment and he pushes colors this way and that way. And he alternates the mop and the broom and he sloshes and splashes and spills and spatters and splatters paint onto this huge roll of paper.

The small crowd grows larger and larger. You can imagine their curiosity is giving way to amazement. Things starting to take shape and take form. And then the painting was finished. Difficult to make out at the ground level, onlookers, they rushed to the temple roofs and they looked down from this higher position and before them lay a crystal clear picture of Japan's beloved Buddhist saint, Daruma. With a showman's flair Hokusai had painted a figure that he knew would resonate emotionally with the audience. So for this, he became a local hero.

So he started to achieve some recognition for his work and the things that he's doing, this showmanship. And to me, this seems like something I think is very innovative for the time that it was in. So not stopping there, he continues and he's creating these colossal creations, like the one that I just described, and he's also doing these microscopic masterpieces. We're told that he gets a grain of rice and he's making these very fine detailed drawings on small grains of rice to the amazement of everyone.

So when I think about all this showmanship and these displays, what he is doing, it really takes me back to the why. How and why was he doing this? And I recall again, at the beginning of the story, we did say that he was a vendor, street hustler. And if it's anything like today to be a street hustler, you have to be scrappy. It's one of the most difficult professions to etch any type of living out of. It's like the small-scale entrepreneur, that scrappy hustle, you know, you got to go out on street corners and try to hock and sell and, and push out your work. And he was selling these things that he didn't want to sell.

Now he's kind of taking that same mentality of entrepreneurship and applying it to his art. So I think that was pretty cool. How he was able to do that and take that and make that connection to his artwork to become more well-known throughout Japan and then eventually elsewhere throughout the world. So with all this, his name caught the attention of the Shogun Tokugawa Ienari, and then he's invited to an art competition. And the only thing that I can think of in modern day that we could associate to this would be like if you were an artist and you got invited to the governor's mansion to show your work to be presented in front of a crowd.

So this was definitely something that was big. A great honor for him. Here's the kicker though. He's pitted against this very renowned painter named Buncho and each man was instructed to come up with a painting on the spot. So no time to really think about it or anything. So the master artist, Buncho, created a phenomenal painting. So impressive it seems unbeatable and then goes Hokusai. And we're told that he started by sketching beautiful birds and landscape scenes almost as if he's warming up. Then he tears down a large screen of paper. I've seen this before.

This time he starts painting it with a broom. Very familiar, right? And he does these hues of light blues and dark blues and a picture of a river starts to take form. And then in a crazily inventive move he reaches into a cage and grabs a rooster. What is he going to do with this? Well he dips its talens into reddish orange paint and then releases it onto the paper. And the rooster walks around and its footprints create this random pattern. Next thing you know it's recognizable as fall maple leaves. What is the significance of this? Well the people perk up because this painting looks oddly familiar. Most of the crowd had visited the Tatsuta River in the fall because of its natural beauty.

Leaves fall into it and they admired this. These orange leaves floating downstream. And since Hokusai was a master at connecting his art to the very memory and soul of the crowd. He'd recreated this Tatsuta River in an amazing and innovative and just crazy inventive way. His name is firmly cemented as the people's champion. Artists are the vanguards of the human spirit, the human memory, the human soul, if you will. And we see again this hard work. This is the theme that I'm going to continue to tie into this narrative and this short biography of Hokusai because he was a man utterly absorbed with art and drawing.

So when a bill collector came to collect, he wouldn't even look up from his work. He would just put his hand out and just hand them an envelope. Sometimes they were short changed. They came back angry and then other times they got more than what they bargained for. And I'm sure they didn't come back in that case but money wasn't a factor for him. It wasn't about the money. It wasn't about the superficial. It was about legacy. It was about a commitment to personal honor in work, integrity, ceaseless, never ending drawing. Again he had this very fiery, unquenchable commitment to his artwork. I think there's definitely something to be said about the tremendous value of consistent hard work.

Hokusai is a very good example of this. It's interesting that he produced so many drawings. He produced so many paintings. It defies calculation. I was actually floored by the amount of ideas that he was just able to place on canvas. He completed no less than 40,000 paintings, drawings, sketches. He's like a machine basically producing daily. So no subject escaped his drawing table. He did political scenes, nature, the marketplace, religion, wealth, poverty, everyday life. The freedom and the artistic expression cannot be understated so that even some of the wild fantasies and the musings and the depths of the human psyche come out on paper.

Whether it'd be the normal, the erotic, the taboo, the mundane, the extravagant, the extraordinary. All of this comes out on paper. And it makes me wonder if there is a correlation between the strictness of the society and the sheer magnitude and freedom of the artwork. Maybe the stricter the society, the more free the art. And he didn't stop there. He drew nature in the form of animals, birds, insects, fish, mountains, grasses, and landscapes. He did lightning and thunder, wind and fire. None of it escaped his pen. His sketchbook showed people of all professions, all activities.

From weavers to wrestlers and archers and soldiers. He did mythical heroes. He did the ghastly ghosts, prostitutes, beggars, samurai. Nothing was too high. Nothing was too low. He literally painted everything. And I think that's part of his charm because he was able to capture the human condition and all of its forms and all of its beauty. And he also was able to capture the natural world that we all live in. We are talking about legacy and we are talking about greatness, genius. Those are the more subversive terms that really cut a whole lot more deeply than just success that in modern times is tied to the monetary, let's be honest.

Tied a lot of times to money, to possessions. Not tied to the intangible, to the things that cut really deeply into the human spirit. One of the other themes in Hokusai's life would be the pursuit of happiness because this happiness, and I mean this very deep sense of happiness in what you're doing and this state of being that you can accomplish. That is almost like a nirvana, I would say, or like a heaven on earth experience by doing something that you so much love that it's like you're in a momentary heaven. How many of us are able to get this and attain this in what we do every day?

And I found another quote, it's not from Hokusai, it's from Asai Ryoi. And this is from Tails of the Floating World. And it ties into this pursuit of happiness and living for the moment. It says, "living only for the moment, savoring the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms, and the maple leaves, singing songs, drinking wine, and diverting oneself, and simply floating unconcerned by the prospect of eminent poverty, buoyant, and carefree, like a gourd carried along with the current of the river."

So that really touched me because it's saying that you can attain happiness as a personal freedom, no matter how strict the society is, or no matter the poverty or the suffering, if only for a moment we can attain freedom. There's definitely something to say about attaining freedom in the larger world around you and ending suffering in that way. But it definitely offers a great hope that you can attain this freedom through art, through music, through the humanities and these things that a lot of times people are saying kind of need to go out the window for the sciences and technology and things that are more rational.

This floating world mentality is what uplifted the artwork that Hokusai was doing. This world away from the world, right? This world away from the strict bureaucracy and the strict social order and hierarchy and classism and poverty that are very evident in a lot of the circles of Japanese society. Again, back to happiness though. I think that we tend to think about happiness and we focus on things in life. We often crave or long to own things, concrete consumables, like money or intangible resources, such as time or even inner peace.

Like we want something to hold on to. And I think that happiness is again, tied to personal freedom. The type of freedom that allows us to control our own destiny. The type of freedom that transcends economics, judgment, or status. And Hokusai was able to achieve happiness through his artistic expression. He lived through trauma, through civil war, through rapid social change, restricting laws and the full scope of human tribulations. Things that we all go through. Things that you go through and I go through. Loss and poverty. I mean, he always didn't make the amount of money or manage his money correctly to where he always had everything he needed, but he was still paying and that was free for him.

He lost everything when his house was burned down, his life's work, but that didn't even stop him there. So he still pursued this happiness, this artwork that gave that to him. It wasn't so much about the product, but as the journey. The heaven that he was able to create for himself on earth, this nirvana, this flow. So Hokusai, he lived to the ripe old age of 90 years old. And one of his other few surviving quotes tells us much about his character once again, and how he was on a humble quest for perfection. He says, "if only heaven will give me just another 10 years, just another five more years, then I could become a real painter."

So here's a person who, by all intents and purposes the world over, is known as a real painter. One of the realist painters that ever lived. But yet he is saying just a little bit longer and I can get it. I don't have it yet. The humility in that statement, that's something to aspire to. The life of Hokusai, a pursuit of happiness, hard work, freedom through the arts. That is what I got out of his biography. And I was really excited to share this story with you.