ADULTHOOD IS A S#!%SHOW
“Their daddies taught them how to keep a slave in line, passed down this brutal heirloom. Take him away from his family, whip him until all he remembers is the whip, chain him up so all he knows is chains. A term in an iron sweatbox, cooking his brains in the sun, had a way of bringing a buck around, and so did a dark cell, a room aloft in darkness, outside time.”
Photographer: Kaj_Graphy
Photographer: Courtneys_Shawts
“Black people always found a way in the most miserable circumstances. If we didn’t, we’d have been exterminated by the white man long ago.”
Via: SheLovesBlackArt
“His grandpa Alfred had kept a steel-drum smoker out back in Newark, on Clinton Ave. He’d do ribs, brisket, make his own sausage. Grandpa Alfred’s father had been a butcher and cook on an indigo plantation in South Carolina and passed down the mysteries.
‘You throw chops on some coals,” Pepper’s grandfather said, “that’s one way to cook a piece of meat. Few minutes later, you got that black on it, you’re done. But barbecue is slow. Put it in that smoke, you got to be ready to wait. That heat and smoke is going to do its work, boy, but you got to wait.’ One was fast and one was slow, and it was the same for stickups and stakeouts. Stickups were chops–they cook fast and hot, you’re in and out. A stakeout was ribs–fire down low, slow, taking your time.”
Via: DiaryDuneAfricaine
Now I don’t align or agree with his vibe, but this quote is the reason I’m posting it because of where we’ve been. More importantly where we weren’t allowed to go, ahem:
“He came back evil. Not because of what happened overseas but from what he saw on his return. He loved the army, and even received a commendation for a letter he wrote to his captain about inequities in the treatment of colored soldiers. Perhaps his life might have veered elsewhere if the US government had opened the country to colored advancement like they opened the army. But it was one thing to allow someone to kill for you and another to let him live next door. The GI Bill fixed things pretty good for the white boys he served with, but the uniform meant different things depending who wore it. What was the point of a no-interest loan when white banks won’t let you step inside?”
Thank you for your service and being the first black US secretary of state, a dream lived. Via: Maurette B Clark
One of these city girls who wasn’t afraid of anything. He’d seen her curse out this muscle-bound turkey who whispered something untoward as she passed on the street, she got up in the dude’s face, but a rat made her squeal like a little girl.
…and I’d run again from more stuff tbh. I don’t do creatures from hell, that’s why I have a cat.
Via: Eleonore Leojeanne
It will enrich your spirit as nothing else can.
It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man.
Make a career of humanity.
Make it a central part of your life.
Via: Diaspora Art
“We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.
Dr. King gave that code shape, articulation, and meaning. There are big forces that want to keep the Negro down, like Jim Crow, and there are small forces that want to keep you down, like other people, and in the face of all those things, the big ones and the smaller ones, you have to stand up straight and maintain your sense of who you are…There are people who trick you and deliver emptiness with a smile, while others rob you of your self-respect. You need to remember who you are.”
Artist: Kvvadwo Obeng