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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
A shadow family was an unacknowledged child or children created by a white male slave owner with a female slave. Often they lived in physical proximity to their father, and a "married maverick reared a white family in the front of the house even as he reared a mulatto family in the back."[1]
In 1834, abolitionist George Bourne wrote, "In the houses of slave-holders, you behold young ladies elegantly attired and attended by their coloured sisters, children of the same father, and yet slaves. You recognise the driver of the carriage, the footman, and other domestics as manifestly the planter's own offspring...Two ladies of the first rank in Virginia affirmed that the Northern citizens were totally incompetent to form any correct idea of a slave plantation. One of them remarked: 'We are called wives, and as such are recognised in law; but we are little more than superintendents of a coloured seraglio.' When the old slave-driver is dead, the 'boy' who is most like him is generally called by his title; and you are often surprised to hear a mulatto coachman or footman denominated captain, major, or colonel. You ask the cause, and are informed, 'the man is so like his father, that if it were not for the colour of his skin, he is such a chip off the old block, that you could not know them apart.'"[2]
In the United States, the most notable example is Thomas Jefferson's six children with Sally Hemings.[3] However, the concept appears throughout the slave economy and influenced American race relations and social history long after slavery was abolished. For example, it has a strong presence in the novels of William Faulkner: "This extreme fear of miscegenation and existence of 'shadow families' is a wrong that Faulkner aims to resurrect from the past."[4]
The documentary record of these families is meager at best and, as a rule, "Nobody's shadow family from slavery times shows up on ancestry websites—not even Faulkner's."[5] Secrecy was of the utmost, for reasons both social and economic: "Sometimes, members of shadow families were abandoned or mistreated, either by the man or by his legitimate white heirs. A white father and husband rarely left his legitimate heirs for his shadow family...Polite Southern society, meanwhile, would criticize a man who did not keep his shadow family sufficiently secret."[6] Talking about shadow families in the public sphere was taboo; for example, when an 18th-century Tidewater woman took her husband to court for adultery and physical abuse, "Elizabeth Yerby transgressed all polite conventions by publicizing evidence of her husband's shadow family. By confronting George in front of William Brown, by drawing a guest's attention to mulatto children in her household, she humiliated her husband, damaging his community standing. This action was a misstep on her part."
"It is evident, from the tenor of the will of Carter, and of the contract, and the evasive statements in the answer to the petition, that...Harriet is the offspring of...Fanny, by testator...No court certainly would lend its aid to enforce rights predicated upon immorality of the grossest and most dangerous kind—dangerous, because the example of a negress, or mulatto, brought up in the style specified...would necessarily exert a most baleful influence upon the surrounding negro population."
— Barksdale v. Elam, 30 Miss. 694, April 1856, Judicial Cases Concerning Slavery and the American Negro, Volume III (1932)
Scholar Arlene R. Keizer, writing about a work by the African-American artist Kara Walker, argues that she uses cut-paper silhouette to cast "the entire family, white and black, slave masters, slave mistresses, enslaved 'concubines,' and children (following the condition of the mother), into shadow...a dysfunctional family portrait, referencing both the biological families engendered through slavery and the nation as a whole. Walker's work calls us to acknowledge and to witness the hypersexualized, often incestuous nature of these families and their implications for the American and African American collective imagination, but offers no path toward resolution."[7]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
A shadow family was an unacknowledged child or children created by a white male slave owner with a female slave. Often they lived in physical proximity to their father, and a "married maverick reared a white family in the front of the house even as he reared a mulatto family in the back." In 1834, abolitionist George Bourne wrote, "In the houses of slave-holders, you behold young ladies elegantly attired and attended by their coloured sisters, children of the same father, and yet slaves. You recognise the driver of the carriage, the footman, and other domestics as manifestly the planter's own offspring...Two ladies of the first rank in Virginia affirmed that the Northern citizens were totally incompetent to form any correct idea of a slave plantation. One of them remarked: 'We are called wives, and as such are recognised in law; but we are little more than superintendents of a coloured seraglio.' When the old slave-driver is dead, the 'boy' who is most like him is generally called by his title; and you are often surprised to hear a mulatto coachman or footman denominated captain, major, or colonel. You ask the cause, and are informed, 'the man is so like his father, that if it were not for the colour of his skin, he is such a chip off the old block, that you could not know them apart.'" In the United States, the most notable example is Thomas Jefferson's six children with Sally Hemings. However, the concept appears throughout the slave economy and influenced American race relations and social history long after slavery was abolished. For example, it has a strong presence in the novels of William Faulkner: "This extreme fear of miscegenation and existence of 'shadow families' is a wrong that Faulkner aims to resurrect from the past." The documentary record of these families is meager at best and, as a rule, "Nobody's shadow family from slavery times shows up on ancestry websites—not even Faulkner's." Secrecy was of the utmost, for reasons both social and economic: "Sometimes, members of shadow families were abandoned or mistreated, either by the man or by his legitimate white heirs. A white father and husband rarely left his legitimate heirs for his shadow family...Polite Southern society, meanwhile, would criticize a man who did not keep his shadow family sufficiently secret." Talking about shadow families in the public sphere was taboo; for example, when an 18th-century Tidewater woman took her husband to court for adultery and physical abuse, "Elizabeth Yerby transgressed all polite conventions by publicizing evidence of her husband's shadow family. By confronting George in front of William Brown, by drawing a guest's attention to mulatto children in her household, she humiliated her husband, damaging his community standing. This action was a misstep on her part." "It is evident, from the tenor of the will of Carter, and of the contract, and the evasive statements in the answer to the petition, that...Harriet is the offspring of...Fanny, by testator...No court certainly would lend its aid to enforce rights predicated upon immorality of the grossest and most dangerous kind—dangerous, because the example of a negress, or mulatto, brought up in the style specified...would necessarily exert a most baleful influence upon the surrounding negro population."
The Shadow Secretary of State for the Family was a short-lived position in the British Shadow Cabinet. It was created in 2004 by then Conservative Party leader, and Leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard. It was an unusual Shadow Cabinet role in that it did not shadow a specific department or Secretary of State, rather it shadowed various responsibilities of other departments such as the Department for Education and Skills. The role was held by only one person, Theresa May, who for much of her tenure held it in conjunction with the job of Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The position was abolished by David Cameron when he was elected Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition on 6 December 2005.
The Shadow refers to a family of cruiser-type motorcycles made by Honda since 1983. The Shadow line features motorcycles with a liquid-cooled 45 or 52-degree V-twin engine. The 250 cc Honda Rebel is associated with the Shadow line in certain markets.
"Death Has a Shadow" is the series premiere and the first episode of the first season of the American animated television series Family Guy. Written by series creator Seth MacFarlane and directed by Peter Shin, the episode aired as a sneak peek on Fox in the United States on January 31, 1999, following Super Bowl XXXIII. In the episode, Peter loses his job after drinking too much at a stag party and falling asleep at work. He signs up for welfare to keep his wife, Lois, from finding out, but receives far more money than he expected. After spending the money recklessly, Lois discovers the truth, prompting Peter to dump the remaining cash from a blimp at the Super Bowl. He is arrested for welfare fraud and must await rescue from his family, alongside various performers who would later become recurring and guest voice actors on the series. The episode was the first overall episode to be animated by Film Roman, Inc. and Sunwoo Digital International through its animation division, Grimsaem Animation Co. The basis for "Death Has a Shadow", as well as Family Guy as a whole, was MacFarlane’s thesis film The Life of Larry, created in 1995 while he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. A sequel, titled Larry & Steve, was conceived in 1996 and aired in 1997 as a segment of Cartoon Network’s World Premiere Toons. Both shorts caught the attention of Fox, which contacted MacFarlane in 1998 to develop a series based on the films. A hand-drawn pilot was created by MacFarlane with a budget of $50,000, leading to the series being accepted for production and the pilot being remade and expanded into its broadcast form. Critical responses to the episode were mostly positive. According to Nielsen ratings, it was viewed by 22 million viewers during its original airing in the United States. In the tenth-season episode "Back to the Pilot", which premiered on November 13, 2011, Stewie and Brian travel back in time to the events of this episode.
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 →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
