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Michael Harriot Books

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“What you are about to read is the story of the first war on terror. No ... wait. This is actually the origin story of second-wave white supremacy known as "Jim Crow laws." This is a war narrative. This is a horror story, but it's also a suspense thriller that ends in triumph. It also ends in tragedy. It's a true story about a fantastic myth. This is a narrative, nonfiction account of the all-American fairy tale of liberty and justice for all. Behold, the untold story of the Great American Race War. Before we begin, we shall introduce our hero. The hero of this drama is Black people. All Black people. The free Blacks; the uncloaked maroons; the Black elite; the preachers and reverends; the doormen and doctors; the sharecroppers and soldiers—they are all protagonists in our epic adventure. Spoiler alert: the hero of this story does not die. Ever. This hero is long-suffering but unkillable. Bloody and unbowed. In this story—and in all the subsequent sequels, now and forever—this hero almost never wins. But we still get to be the heroes of all true American stories simply because we are indestructible. Try as they might, we will never be extinguished. Ever.”

RaceSurvivalRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksSurvivingSurvivorsJim Crow
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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“Unlike the poor English, Irish, and native indentured servants, the African imports and their children were now considered property.... By creating a legally binding, race-based, intergenerational, perpetually oppressed class of human beings, Virginia revealed that all that nonsense in the colony's first charter about God, liberty, and the "true religion" was a farce. Slavery was an American idea, not a product of the time. No law was passed in England that legalized slavery. France's Code noir was similar, but it would come about two decades after Virginia's declaration. From its inception, America was always a pyramid scheme where the wealthy benefited from the labor of the poor.”

OppressionSlavery In The United States
Book:Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
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“Nearly every state’s laws governing the enslaved were based, in part, on the Negro Act of 1740, proving that the uniquely American version of human subjugation was never just a thoughtless experiment. It was ingrained in the fabric of the America. It was intentional: a color-coded, never-ending, legally protected, constitutionally enshrined system of human trafficking that extorted labor, intellectual property, and talent in the most brutal way imaginable. It was born out of fear and white supremacy.”

Slavery In America
Book:Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
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“Through a complex combination of whitewashing, guilt, and an intentional recasting of history that absolves them of their hatred, our historical translators have painted a sanitized, impressionist portrait of a struggle for Black liberation that was eventually fulfilled by American’s unwavering commitment to justice and equality. Out of whole cloth, they managed to fabricate a fantastic ahistorical myth that somehow became truth. They remember a socially conservative, respectable campaign of racial reconciliation, not a movement of anti-establishment revolutionaries. And for their sake, the doctrine of nonviolent resistance was eventually reduced to simple ‘nonviolence.’ They never speak of the ‘resisting.”

American HistoryWhitewashing
Book:Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
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