Author: jhnashtongmailcom

As Great Britain, France, Spain and other European nations competed for control of the New World and its wealth they all in varying ways came to rely on African labor to develop their overseas colonial possessions. Exploiting its proximity to plantations in the British colonies in North America and the West Indies, King Charles II of Spain issued the Edict of 1693 which stated that any male slave on an English plantation who escaped to Spanish Florida would be granted freedom provided he joined the Militia and became a Catholic. This edict became one of the New World’s earliest emancipation proclamations.

 

Source: Black Then | Fort Mose (Florida): An Escaped Slave’s Promise Land

Ojok Okello is transforming his destroyed village into a green town where social enterprises responsibly harness the shea tree

Source: ‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power | Global development | The Guardian

Source: The Black Panther Party and the Rev. Cheryl Dawson | KQED

In 1942, when the long-practicing architect finally gained entry to the American Institute of Architects, the director of Philadelphia’s Museum of Art, a building which Abele helped conceive in a classical Greek style, called him “one of the most sensitive designers anywhere in America.”

 

Source: Meet the black architect who designed Duke University 37 years before he could have attended it – Curbed

An indigenous family-owned business is hoping to expand their reach after creating a hand sanitizer inspired by traditional medicinal plants

Source: Indigenous family creates sweet grass, sage, cedar, sweet tobacco infused hand sanitizers

When Darius Settles died from COVID-19 on the Fourth of July, his family and the city of Nashville, Tenn., were shocked. Even the mayor noted the passing of a 30-year-old without any underlying conditions — one of the city’s youngest fatalities at that point.

Settles was also uninsured and had just been sent home from an emergency room for the second time, and he was worried about medical bills. An investigation into his death found that, like many uninsured COVID-19 patients, he had never been told that cost shouldn’t be a concern.

 

Source: Hospital Bills For Uninsured COVID-19 Patients Are Covered Under The CARES Act : Shots – Health News : NPR

The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed, by today’s standards, an almost dreamily secure existence that now seems out of reach for all too many Americans. I refer, of course, to the Simpsons. Homer, a high-school graduate whose union job at the nuclear-power plant required little technical skill, supported a family of five. A home, a car, food, regular doctor’s appointments, and enough left over for plenty of beer at the local bar were all attainable on a single working-class salary. Bart might have had to find $1,000 for the family to go to England, but he didn’t have to worry that his parents would lose their home.

Source: The Life in The Simpsons Is No Longer Attainable – The Atlantic

In the wealthiest country in the world, there’s no reason anyone should be poor. Period.

 

Source: Ending Poverty in the United States Would Actually Be Pretty Easy