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Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4322
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 05:12 pm: | 
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May 2, 2007
Historical Amnesia
Worst U.S. Massacre?
By CARLA BLANK
The mass media coverage of how 32 students and faculty members were fatally shot and at least 15 injured on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., is punctuated by phrases such as, "the worst massacre in U.S. history," or, as the New York Times put it, the "Worst U.S. Gun Rampage." CNN called it the "Deadliest Shooting Rampage in U.S. history."
This was followed by San Francisco Bay Area's FOX affiliate KTVU Channel 2's claim that it was "the worst massacre ever in the United States." TV commentary did not qualify these claims, and at least one Virginia Tech student, an Asian American himself, echoed the phrase when interviewed on national television, pondering his presence at the "worst massacre in U.S. history." In reality, an accurate investigation of mass killings of this magnitude would quickly reveal that the Virginia Tech massacre, as horrendous as it was, was not the worst massacre to occur on U.S. soil.
There were much bloodier massacres before Blacksburg:
-- In 1860, Bret Harte, a well-known California writer, had just begun his writing career, working as a newspaper reporter in Arcata (known then as Union). Harte was expelled from Humboldt County because he recorded the Gunther Island Massacre of Wiyot Indians, committed on Feb. 26, 1860, when a small group of white men murdered between 60 and 200 Wiyot men, women and children. The massacre was encouraged by a local newspaper. Extermination was once the official policy of the California government toward Native Americans, as Gov. Peter H. Burnett stated in 1851: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected..."
-- On April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow, near Memphis, Tenn., Confederate troops under Gen. Nathan Forrest massacred 227 black and white Union troops with such ferocity that an eyewitness Confederate soldier said, "blood, human blood, stood about in pools and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity...Gen. Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued. Finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased."
-- On April 13, 1873, 350 miles northwest of New Orleans in Colfax, Grand Parish, La., 280 blacks were victims of a group of armed white men that included members of the White League and the Ku Klux Klan. Known as the Colfax Massacre, it was said to be sparked by contested local elections, although more generally its cause was white opposition to Reconstruction, which in 1875 resulted in a legal ruling, United States vs. Cruikshank, an important basis of future gun-control legislation, because it allows that "the federal government had no power to protect citizens against private action (not committed by federal or state government authorities) that deprived them of their constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment."
-- In 1913, during another nationally publicized action known as the Ludlow Massacre, more than 66 people were killed, including 11 children, and two women who were burned alive. Sparked by a strike against the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation by the mostly foreign born Serb, Greek and Italian coal miners after one of their union organizers was murdered, it eventually involved the Colorado National Guard, imported strikebreakers and sympathetic walkouts by union miners throughout the state. The union never was recognized by the company, and a U.S. congressional committee investigation failed to result in indictments of any militiaman or mine guard.
-- In 1921, a year when 64 lynchings were reported, the African American Greenwood business district of Tulsa, Okla., was the site of shooting deaths of at least 40 people, most of whom were black, although the undocumented death toll is said to be closer to 300. This site was then known as the "Negro's Wall Street," and was home to 15,000 people and 191 businesses. The rampage took the form of a riot, and was caused by economic tensions, particularly sparked by an article in the Tulsa Tribune regarding an alleged rape incident between a black shoe shiner and a white elevator operator. Because of this riot, Tulsa became the first U.S. city to be bombed from the air, when police dropped dynamite from private planes to break it up. Whites took possession of most of the land, and the site has become part of Oklahoma State University's Tulsa campus.
The reporting of the Virginia Tech massacre reveals that an ignorance of American history is not only a problem affecting American students but extends to our most influential newsrooms, even those with archives extending back to the 1800s. A member of the New York Times' editorial staff is Brent Staples, a black writer who is an expert on the Tulsa massacre. There is no excuse for such historical amnesia on the part of those who have taken upon themselves the serious task of informing the public.
Carla Blank is the author of "Rediscovering America" (Three Rivers Press,
2003).
This essay originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2199
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 06:01 pm: |
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Great post! Unfortunately, this information is historically obscure and more importantly, the victims where black. Therefore, not worthy of our national consciousness. |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2128
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 06:27 am: |
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Thanks for this, Chris...I'll be posting this somewhere else. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4686
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 03:48 pm: |
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Obviously the media is referring to recent history. Not the history of the U.S. since the beginning of time. Also, they are referring to a school shooting, lone-gunman scenario. Not battles, wars, riots, etc. Where do you find this garbage?
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Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2133
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 04:07 pm: |
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It's just as bad considering the reasons they were committed to begin with: basically NO REASON AT ALL. The media isn't considering those because those they don't consider TRAGEDIES. I promise you that if no other tragedy touches this one for 200 more years, the media won't mind reminding us that the "greatest" tragedies to befall us on US soil were done by an asian and a group of arabs.
Keep in mind that white people are the same people who tell us to GET OVER Jim Crow because that was SO LONG AGO we need to move on (so long ago that women who lost SONS to lynches are still alive to tell it). |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2134
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 04:20 pm: |
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And "in U.S. History" doesn't really make me think of just the last 80 years. If they meant just in the last 80 years, they should have said so and not "in U.S. History". |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4687
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 04:37 pm: |
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Right. And then there was Hiroshima. Which has SHIT to do with anything that's being discussed here.
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Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4326
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 05, 2007 - 10:54 am: |
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Right. And then there was Hiroshima. Which has SHIT to do with anything that's being discussed here.
(Screw them nips. They asked for it and they got it (see the Rape of Nanking and all the barbarous acts they committed against helpless citizens in Manila)
You cry more for them than the black GIs who would have had to die routing them out of their holes--but that's typical you sorry excuse for a black woman!
No wonder blacks won't do business with you! |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4689
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 05, 2007 - 11:33 am: |
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First off, you don't even have an inkling of the slightest bit of a fukcing clue about what makes me cry. And second, who said that Black's won't do business with me, you overgrown sasquatch negrotoid???
New word everyone!!! Negrotoid. It's a negro who looks like a sasquatch (that's a bigfoot for the uninitiated) who eats Willie's sweatmeats, crackers, spoilt food and who hasn't had a whiff of poontang since 1948.
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Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4329
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 05, 2007 - 11:49 am: |
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And second, who said that Black's won't do business with me, you overgrown sasquatch negrotoid???
(You did. I believe you owe me some poontang. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4690
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 05, 2007 - 12:50 pm: |
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Never said it. I said that the furniture manufacturers (and their reps) that I deal with are white (men) and they would not do business with me if they knew I am Black. Black people buy my furniture, but the majority of my customers are white - because . . . there's more white people buying furniture than Black ones. So I owe you nothing! Get your own damn poontang you desperate loser!
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4691
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 05, 2007 - 01:30 pm: |
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And BTW, if you know of any major BLACK furniture manufacturers (the type who mass produce), please advise.
Thank you.
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Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4337
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 07, 2007 - 12:08 pm: |
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That is what you said. You said blacks don't do business with other blacks--jeez, if you wasn't gonna stick with it why you say it?
Another business tip. Quit attacking effeminate gay men.
They buy lots of furniture. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4706
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 08, 2007 - 12:22 am: |
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Get it right---jeez. I never said any of that. The fact is that there are NO Black furniture manufacturers for me to do business with because they don't exist. Get it?
Again, I'm not talking about a Black person who makes furniture, I'm referring to a manufacturer such as Ashley, Thomasville, etc. Someone who mass produces.
Get it???
And speaking of effeminate gay men, just let me know your decorating dilemma and I'd be happy to hook you right on up.
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