Mauvais Sang

Exodus Of African Americans From The South- Post Civil War

During a fifty-five-year period following the end of the Civil War, African Americans built more than fifty identifiable communities in Oklahoma

African Americans left the South for the “promised land” of the West in ever-increasing numbers after the Civil War. Economic hardship, racial violence, and intolerance prompted this vast migration from states such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, and Arkansas.

During a fifty-five-year period following the end of the Civil War, African Americans built more than fifty identifiable communities in Oklahoma. Some sprouted and quickly vanished; others still survive. Achieving freedom after the Civil War, former slaves of the Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Choctaws also formed towns in Indian Territory. When the U.S. government allotted land to individual Native Americans, most Indian “freedman” chose land next to other African Americans. Their farming communities sheltered self-governed economic and social institutions, including businesses, schools, and churches. Enterprising businessmen set up every imaginable kind of business, including publishing concerns whose newspapers advertised in the South for settlers.

Immediately after statehood in 1907 the Oklahoma legislature passed Jim Crow laws, and many African Americans became disenchanted with the new state. A large contingent relocated to western Canada.  Another exodus of African Americans from the United States occurred with the “Back to Africa” movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A large group of Oklahomans joined the illfated Chief Sam expedition to Africa. Other Plains African Americans migrated to colonies in Mexico.

Today, only a few all-black towns survive, but their legacy of economic and political freedom is well remembered.

Larry O'Dell Oklahoma Historical Society-/Crockett, Norman. The Black Towns. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979.

Unidentified Union Soldier And Wife

From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War ravaged America. Concerning African American soldiers:

66% is the estimated percentage of dead African American Union soldiers who were never identified

180,000  Number of African American soldiers that served in the Civil War

Cases of African American units’ essential involvements abound throughout Civil War history, in nearly every major battle except Sherman’s invasion of Georgia. One might wonder how the course of the Civil War could have been different if the South had not been so reticent to muster some of its non-white population to Civil War battlefields. -The Civil War Trust

No original source or photographer for photo found

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/death-numbers/

The Beatles refused to play in front of segregated audiences and had it written as a stipulation in their contracts. 

At a 1964 concert in Jacksonville, Florida, John Lennon said:

“We never play to segregated audiences and we aren’t going to start now. I’d sooner lose our appearance money.”  

When you hear your jam and just have to get up and dance.