The Random stories of Black History thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Hollande and Senegalese president Macky Sall in 2012. EPA

There is no evidence that there was an armed mutiny: there is a record of the tirailleurs expressing their anger in no uncertain terms, but there was no organised violence. On the other hand, there is clear evidence of premeditation on the part of the French army, which arrived at the camp heavily armed to impose “order” on its “mutineers” – whose only weapons were knives and clubs.

It is also likely that the number of victims has been drastically underestimated. Mabon has identified a discrepancy of 300-400 between the lists of those said to have boarded a ship from Brittany bound for Dakar and those who landed. Given the heavy weaponry used, a death toll of 300-400 does not seem improbable. The men were buried in a mass grave that has yet to be located.

Reparation and justice
At a recent conference in Lorient, academics, writers, cultural groups and activists gathered to discuss the relationship between archives, fiction and the truth behind various colonial massacres. Needless to say, Thiaroye was at the centre of the discussion. The most moving contributions came from the children of Antoine Abibou and Doudou Diallo, two of the men convicted as ringleaders after the massacre.

Although both were amnestied in 1947, along with the other surviving prisoners (many had died while in prison), their convictions weren’t overturned and Abibou was forbidden from remaining in Africa and effectively exiled to France for the remainder of his life.

His son Yves Abibou told the audience that he had spent most of his life trying to flee his father’s past. That is, until Mabon tracked him down and told him what she knew about Thiaroye.

He doesn’t want an apology from the French state. What he wants now is recognition of the truth and justice in the form of a full pardon for his father. That is what all the men of Thiaroye and their descendants deserve.

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Thiaroye massacre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

On this day
December 16, 1945

Black Family Killed After Refusing to Leave White Neighbourhood in California

On December 16, 1945, the Fontana, California, home of the Short family erupted in flames, killing Helen Short and her two children, Barry, 9, and Carol Ann, 7. Husband and father O'Day H. Short initially survived the explosion and fire but stayed in critical condition at a nearby hospital for several weeks until he also succumbed to his injuries. Until their deaths, the Shorts were the first and only Black family living in their neighborhood.

Initially organized as a collection of chicken farms and citrus groves in the early 20th century, by the early 1940s, the small San Bernardino County town of Fontana had been transformed by the opening of a wartime steel mill into an industrial center. As the community grew and became more diverse, strict segregation lines emerged: Black families moving out of the overcrowded Los Angeles area were relegated to living in the rocky plains of “North Fontana” and working in the dirtiest departments of the mill. Ku Klux Klan activity also surged throughout Southern California during this time period, with white supremacists poised to terrorize Black and Chicano veterans of WWII returning with ideas of racial equality.

This was the reality in the fall of 1945, when Mr. Short—a Mississippi native and Los Angeles civil rights activist—purchased a tract of Fontana land in the white section of town and made arrangements to move there with his family. As the Shorts built their modest home and prepared to live in it full-time, local forces of all kinds tried to stop them. In early December 1945, “vigilantes” visited Mr. Short and ordered him to move or risk harm to his family; he refused and reported the threats to the FBI and local sheriff. Sheriff’s deputies did not offer protection and instead reiterated the warning that Mr. Short should leave before his family was harmed. Soon after, members of the Fontana Chamber of Commerce visited the home, encouraging Mr. Short to move to the North Fontana area and offering to buy his home. He refused.

Just days later, an explosion “of unusual intensity” destroyed the home, killing Mrs. Short and the family's children. Mr. Short survived for two weeks, shielded from the knowledge of the other deaths, but died in January 1946 after the local D.A. bluntly informed him of his family’s fate during an investigative interview.

Local officials initially concluded that the fire was an accident, caused by Mr. Short’s own lighting of an outdoor lamp. After relatives of the Shorts, the Black press, and the Los Angeles NAACP protested, a formal inquest was held, at which an independent arson investigator obtained by the NAACP testified that the fire had clearly been intentionally set. Despite this testimony and evidence of the harassment the Short family had endured in the weeks leading up to the fire, local officials again concluded the explosion was an accident and closed the case. No criminal investigation was ever opened, no arrests or prosecutions were made, and residential segregation persisted in Fontana for over 25 more years.