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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Flying Africans are figures of African diaspora legend who escape enslavement by a magical passage back over the ocean. Most noted in Gullah culture, they also occur in wider African-American folklore, and in that of some Afro-Caribbean peoples.[1]
Though it is generally agreed that the legend reflects a longing for a reversal of the Atlantic slave trade, scholars differ on the extent to which this should be seen as supernatural belief or as allegory: of freedom, death, the afterlife, and even metamorphosis or reincarnation. A common Gullah etiology given for this belief is the 1803 mass suicide at Igbo Landing as a form of resistance among newly enslaved people, although versions of the legend also occur across the African diaspora.[2][3][4][5]
In a Gullah context, the flying Africans are associated with Hoodoo spirituality, and sometimes perform their ascension through a ritual like a ring shout. Gullah lore also associates flying Africans with a magical iron hoe that works by itself, and a never-empty pot that they leave behind,[6][7] perhaps relating to the influence of the Yoruba deity Ogun on Hoodoo. Another figure described in Gullah lore as flying on occasion and eventually returning to Africa is the folk hero John the Conqueror.
Sometimes flight is mentioned as a general ability of select ancestors, outside of the specific context of an African return. Flight could be by an individual, by a married couple (who might have to leave behind their children if not African-born),[6] or as a collective act. In some Caribbean versions, salt prevents people from flying, perhaps linked to the soucouyant tradition.[8] The means of flight varied, from levitation, to growing wings, to turning into birds (sometimes buzzards),[6] or in the case of the Igbo Landing drownings, they were allegorized as walking on water to Africa.
The legend has been compared to the flying imagery found in a number of spirituals, and also to the metaphor of a "caged bird".[9] Spirituals in this vein include "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "Now Let Me Fly" and "All God's Chillun Got Wings".[10] Harriet Tubman experienced dreams of flying "like a bird" in her youth.[11]
The legend appears a number of times in interviews for the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narrative Collection of the 1930s, though given the circumstances these are difficult to interpret; it appears in somewhat greater cultural detail in the slightly later Drums and Shadows. Zora Neale Hurston includes a Jamaican version in her 1938 Tell My Horse, where those who have consumed salt are unable to fly away. John Bennett in 1946 published a story under the title of the spiritual "All God's Chillun Got Wings" as told to him by Caesar Grant.[10] It appears in The Book of Negro Folklore of 1958, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps.
Ralph Ellison's short story Flying Home was written in 1967. It is mentioned in Ishamel Reed's 1976 Flight to Canada. Toni Morrison's 1977 novel Song of Solomon references the legend directly, and it is also alluded to in much of her other writing.[12] In interviews, Morrison emphasized the flying Africans as a real folk belief, not a mere metaphor. It also appears in Octavia Butler's 1980 Wild Seed,[13][14] Paule Marshall's 1983 Praisesong for the Widow and Charles R. Johnson's 1990 Middle Passage.[15]
The legend itself is included as the title story of Virginia Hamilton's 1986 collection The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, and in the 2004 standalone reissue The People Could Fly: The Picture Book, with enhanced illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon.
Julie Dash's 1991 film Daughters of the Dust quotes from Praisesong for the Widow at Igbo Landing. In Dash's research for the film, she found Igbo Landing had such salience that it was identified by tradition in many local places in the Gullah region. Faith Ringgold utilized elements of the legend in her 1991 illustrated children's book Tar Beach,[16][17] and in subsequent artworks including the 1996 subway mosaic Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines at 125th Street station, also inspired by the Lionel Hampton composition "Flying Home". Ngozi Onwurah's 1994 film Welcome II the Terrordome references the appearance in Daughters of the Dust. The legend is the basis for the song "We Could Fly" on Rhiannon Giddens's 2017 album Freedom Highway.[18] Sophia Nahli Allison began her Dreaming Gave Us Wings self portrait series in 2017,[19] including an experimental documentary in The New Yorker.[20] Hamilton's collection also inspired the naming of the 2021 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Before Yesterday We Could Fly.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Flying Africans are figures of African diaspora legend who escape enslavement by a magical passage back over the ocean. Most noted in Gullah culture, they also occur in wider African-American folklore, and in that of some Afro-Caribbean peoples. Though it is generally agreed that the legend reflects a longing for a reversal of the Atlantic slave trade, scholars differ on the extent to which this should be seen as supernatural belief or as allegory: of freedom, death, the afterlife, and even metamorphosis or reincarnation. A common Gullah etiology given for this belief is the 1803 mass suicide at Igbo Landing as a form of resistance among newly enslaved people, although versions of the legend also occur across the African diaspora.
Igbo Landing (also called Ibo Landing, Ebo Landing, or Ebos Landing) is a historic site at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia. It was the setting of a mass suicide in 1803 by captive Igbo people who had taken control of the slave ship they were on, and refused to submit to slavery in the United States. The event's moral value as a story of resistance towards slavery has symbolic importance in African American folklore as the flying Africans legend, and in literary history.
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is an American four-engined heavy bomber aircraft that was developed in the mid-1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). A fast and high-flying bomber used primarily in the European Theater of Operations, the B-17 dropped more bombs than any other aircraft during World War II. It is the third-most produced bomber in history, behind the American four-engined Consolidated B-24 Liberator and the German multirole, twin-engined Junkers Ju 88. The B-17 was also employed in transport, anti-submarine warfare, and search and rescue roles. In a USAAC competition, Boeing's prototype Model 299/XB-17 outperformed two other entries but crashed, losing the initial 200-bomber contract to the Douglas B-18 Bolo. Still, the Air Corps ordered 13 more B-17s for further evaluation, which were introduced into service in 1938. The B-17 evolved through numerous design advances but from its inception, the USAAC (from 1941 the United States Army Air Forces, USAAF) promoted the aircraft as a strategic weapon. It was a relatively fast, high-flying, long-range bomber with heavy defensive armament at the expense of bomb load. It also developed a reputation for toughness based upon stories and photos of badly damaged B-17s safely returning to air bases. The B-17 saw early action in the Pacific War, where it conducted air raids against Japanese shipping and airfields. However, it was primarily employed by the USAAF in the daylight component of the Allied strategic bombing campaign over Europe, complementing RAF Bomber Command's night bombers in attacking German industrial, military and civilian targets. Of the roughly 1.5 million tons of bombs dropped on Nazi Germany and its occupied territories by Allied aircraft, over 640,000 tons (42.6%) were dropped from B-17s. As of October 2025, three aircraft remain in flying condition, with several others being worked on to bring them to operational status. About 50 survive in storage or are on static display, the oldest of which is The Swoose, a B-17D which was flown in combat in the Pacific on the first day of the United States' involvement in World War II. Several reasonably complete wrecks have been found. B-17 survivors gained national attention in 2022 in the United States, when one, Texas Raiders, was destroyed in a fatal mid-air collision with a Bell P-63 Kingcobra at an airshow.
The liberated Africans of Sierra Leone, also known as recaptives, were Africans who had been illegally enslaved onboard slave ships and rescued by anti-slavery patrols from the West Africa Squadron of the Royal Navy. After the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished Britain's involvement in the slave trade, the Admiralty established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the trade in cooperation with other Western powers. All illegally enslaved Africans liberated by the Royal Navy were taken to Freetown, where Admiralty courts legally confirmed their free status. Some Liberated Africans were consigned to a variety of unfree labor apprenticeships in Sierra Leone. During the 19th century, it has been estimated by historians that roughly 80,000 illegally enslaved Africans were liberated by the Royal Navy.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker