Black Editions

Crispus Attucks was the first casualty in the American Revolutionary War. He was killed on Friday, March 2, 1770 in a bar fight that escalated into what is commonly referred to as the Boston Massacre. Four others were killed that night and they were remembered as martyrs for the cause of liberty. Crispus Attucks was born around 1723. His father was believed to be a slave named Prince Younger and his mother was thought to be a Natick Indian named Nancy Attucks. It is believed that Attucks escaped from slavery early in his twenties. Little else is known about his early life. After he was killed, Attucks’s body was placed in Faneuil Hall where it lay in state until March 8, 1770. He has been immortalized as “the first to pour out his blood as a precious libation on the altar of a people’s rights.”

(Source: vintageblack2, via americangentility)

A lock of hair said to be Frederick Douglass’s

(Source: congeniallygenuine)

thebkcircus:

MOS DEF + BKc Mustard Chinos=Classic!

vintageblack2:

Benjamin “Pap” Singleton: Following the Civil War, former fugitive slave Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, who actively helped other runaways, returned to his native Tennessee intent on helping other black people. White Tennesseans’ refusal to sell the land at fair prices prompted Singleton, along with partner Columbus Johnson, to stake out land in Kansas for black people. Part of the Black Exodus or the Exoduster Movement of 1879, Singleton, known as the “Father of the Exodus,” personally facilitated the relocation of hundreds of black Tennesseans to the Midwest. At least 50,000 African Americans left the South for the Midwest from 1879 to 1881 in response to the federal government pulling the plug on Reconstruction.

vintageblack2:

New York’s famous 369th regiment arrives home from France, 1919.
Nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, the 369th Regiment was the first all-black regiment to fight in World War I. They arrived in France in 1918 and fought on the front lines for six months, longer than any other American unit during the war. Source: ca. 1919, Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, MD. 

(Source: youaintoriginal, via vintageblack2)

Burundi Family 1908

Unidentified Black family